Class of Worker Explained

Emsi creates data for two distinct job types, or Classes of Worker (CoW): Employees and Self-Employed. For a detailed breakdown on each and when to use them, read on.

Employees

What it is:
Because there are multiple sources of employment data by industry available in Canada, some discretion has to be used in determining which source should be considered primary (all other sets are adjusted to its figures). Emsi considers SEPH to be the best candidate for being the primary set for employee counts and employee earnings by industry. At the most detailed, SEPH provides us 4-digit NAICS detail by province/territory. Because SEPH is a ‘suppressed’ set (meaning that some industries are withheld for confidentiality purposes), Emsi uses a proprietary process to un-suppress the data.

When to use it:
Employees is great at capturing wage & salaried jobs.

Self-Employed

What it is:

Self employment data by nature is a less robust set of information than employee data, and excludes the use of some of the most important datasets. For self-employment data, SEPH and CBP have no bearing, which leaves us with only two main surveys to work with: the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the Census. We benchmark our self-employment data to the LFS (the Census, by the nature of the questions asked, undercounts the number of self-employed).

When to use it:

You can view Self-Employed on its own to gauge entrepreneurial activity in your region, or see what sectors typically have more self-employment than others.

Class of Worker Explained

Submit a Question

Related

Submit a Question

Class of Worker Explained

Submit a Question

Related

Why Doesn’t Emsi Publish More Detailed Unemployment Data?

Understanding Location Quotient

Understanding Shift Share

Submit a Question