Bank Of Canada Web 3 example essay topic

596 words
To address the economy in Canada you must define the areas to be measured. Economic expansion occurs when the economy is growing and people are spending money. In order to be doing this, there must be money to be made. Therefore there must be some kind of workforce to employ the people in order to make the money to be spent. Conversely the opposite happens during a recession when the economy slows down.

Business at this time is not able to sell as many products. They then increase layoffs, which will slow down the economy and see a decline in productivity and spending of consumers. As a starting point to address this question, the fist point addressed will be the unemployment rate. This rate is defined as the condition in which a population wants to work but cant find jobs (1). In the time January 1993 to January 2003 the unemployment rate went from 11.1% to 7.4% (1). This decrease in the unemployment rate accounted for 3.7% increase in the number of employed work force.

This in turn would create more jobs, and with all other thing being equal would create more income for its citizens to spend. With more jobs comes more spending and more growth. Communities spend more on building and increasing there infrastructure. Another indicator to measure the economy is called the gross domestic product.

This is defined as the sum of all goods and services produced in a country during a year. Gross domestic product is also referred as economic output. In the year from January 1993 to January 2003 the gross domestic product has risen 35.5% (table 1). This indicates the economy has grown significantly during this time with more goods and services produced in Canada. An indicator to address the standard of living in could be the consumer price index. The consumer price index is a broad measure of the cost of living in Canada 2.

In this time period the consumer price index increased 18.29%2. Therefore the average annual rate of inflation was 1.69%2. The bank of Canada has an Inflation control target set at around 2%3. Over this period of time the average inflation was well within the target. It would be my conclusion based on these indicators that the Canadian economy has grown and the standard of living has increased. These of course are the financial indicators that do not take into account all the diversity of a country.

Standard of living has many angles like education access to health care and fresh water and food for the poor. These of course do not take into account all of these. When accessing standard of living it may be better judged by the United Nations human development reports, where in 2002 Canada ranked number third on the list 4. These reports are compiled using many indicators not just financial ones, like political freedom, adolescent school enrollment and more. Using this Canada ranked third behind Sweden and Norway, but ahead of the United states and Japan, which if you just used the financial indicators it would not have ranked as high. This may be a better indicator as a better overall standard of living Indicator.

The Canadian Economy on Line web 2. The Bank of Canada web 3. The Bank of Canada Inflation Control Target web 4. United Nations Human Development Reports web.