We've all heard political leaders boast that the Canadian economy has fully recovered from the recession and that the recession was not as severe in Canada as in other countries. It turns out that both of those claims are false because they don't take population growth into consideration.
Canada's Incomplete, Mediocre Recovery, a new CCPA study by Jim Stanford finds that, after adjusting for population growth, neither GDP nor employment growth have yet to recoup the ground lost during the 2008-09 downturn. Real per capita GDP remains 1.4% lower as of the third quarter of 2011 than it was at the beginning of 2008. And the labour market is still much weaker than it was before the recession—measured by the employment rate, less than one-fifth of the damage has been repaired.
As for international comparisons, once population growth is factored in, Canada's GDP performance ranks 17th out of 34 OECD countries. Canada also ranks 17th (out of 33 reporting countries) in terms of employment growth.
Click here to read the full report.
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