Resource-extraction employment proportions and socioeconomic indicators in canadian municipalities

Abstract

The purpose of this study was twofold: 1) to describe the distribution of mining employment in Canada by proportion within census subdivision boundaries (CSD), and 2) to describe mining employment in relation to various socioeconomic indicators at the CSD level. This was accomplished by stratifying mining employment proportions into individual categories (none, low, medium, high, and extreme) and calculating the median values of each of these indicators according to mining employment proportion. In effect, communities were profiled according to their level of reliance on resource-extraction dependency. In order to adequately contextualize these findings, a large body of socioeconomic and resource community-based research literature was drawn from. These examples provided a foundational basis for the interpretation and conclusions reached in this study