Receipt — The anatomy of Canadian living standards

A Receipt is a dated evidence summary for one product. It shows the question, the current answer, the sources, the method, the limits, and the next update.

Open the product this Receipt documents → · Portable JSON · Correction policy

The question	What share of the change in real GDP per person comes from output per worker, the employment rate, participation, and population structure?
Current reading	Real GDP per person rose 0.6 per cent over the four quarters to 2026 Q2, to $60,504 in chained 2017 dollars. The revised level is 0.9 per cent below the record's 2022 Q3 peak. Statistics Canada's September 23 demographic release changes the denominator for this same GDP quarter. Real GDP still grew 1.1 per cent over the four quarters, but the aligned population estimate now grew 0.5 per cent rather than falling 0.5 per cent. The earlier reading of a smaller population lifting GDP per person is therefore superseded by the revised source estimates. In the exact log-change identity, output per worker contributes +0.80 percentage points, the employment rate +0.02, participation −0.46, and population structure +0.22, summing to +0.59 points. Output per worker is the largest positive term. These contributions are log changes, so their sum differs slightly from the ordinary 0.6 per cent growth rate. The output-per-worker split is unchanged: business-sector output per hour contributes +1.19 points, measured hours per employed person −0.29, and the national-accounts/business-sector scope reconciliation −0.10. The components use different coverage; the reconciliation is derived and is not an hours effect. This is a revision to the Q2 reading, not a new GDP quarter. Q2 GDP and the monthly labour inputs are paired with April 1 population under the Brief's established quarter-start convention. The newly available July 1 population estimate does not create a Q3 GDP reading. The earlier dated readings remain available as the record of what was known at the time. The household account adds a different view of the same economy. In 2026 Q2 the national saving rate was 3.7%, up from 3.3% in Q1; nominal saving rose by $7.044 billion at seasonally adjusted annual rates as the increase in disposable income exceeded the increase in consumption and the pension adjustment declined. The separately released debt-service ratio fell to 14.52% from a revised 14.68%. These aggregates do not identify who gained, and their denominators differ. The annual consumption panel also counts government and nonprofit services received in kind, which are not household cash income. Latest window: total -0.61 pp, of which population structure alone contributed +0.45 pp.
Evidence reviewed through	2026-10-04
Basis	An exact log-change accounting identity over Statistics Canada series already held in the record: real GDP, population, employment, labour force, LFS working-age population, and the labour-productivity index. The terms sum to the per-person change exactly, and that arithmetic is re-checked automatically every time the record is rebuilt. Separate household panels use Statistics Canada tables 36-10-0112-01 (quarterly household accounts) and 36-10-0609-01 (annual actual final consumption), with their own nominal-price and period conventions.
Method	Pinned, cited evidence; every scenario uses a named, disclosed formula and is recomputed exactly with each rebuild of the record.
Confidence	Every input is an official published series already in the record; the breakdown is exact arithmetic, re-checked automatically on every rebuild, including the era ladder, the boundary sensitivity check, and the per-capita peak scan.
Next trigger	The next quarterly GDP or demographic release that moves any term materially, a revision that changes a prior reading, or an annual comprehensive National Accounts revision that moves any era's annualized rate by at least a tenth of a percentage point or changes the eras' order.
Next evidence	Quarterly GDP (Statistics Canada), quarterly demographic estimates, monthly Labour Force Survey, and Statistics Canada's annual comprehensive National Accounts revision — see the release table on Now.
Expiry	The current reading expires at the next quarterly GDP and population releases; the method itself is standing.

Material definitions

The identity locates arithmetic, never causes: a term's contribution is where the change shows up in measurement, not why it happened.
Output per worker is sub-split into three lines: output per hour (measured, the Statistics Canada labour-productivity index, business sector, SNA hours basis), hours worked per employed person (measured, the business-sector hours-worked index against Labour Force Survey employment), and a narrower national-accounts / business-sector scope reconciliation (derived residual). The three bases are never silently mixed, and the three lines sum to the output-per-worker term exactly.
Monthly labour terms are sampled at quarter starts to align with quarterly GDP and population, a convention reviewed and adopted in July 2026.
The historical record is read in four eras at quarter-exact decade-end boundaries (the end of 1991, 2000, 2010, and 2019, plus the rolling latest quarter); each era's growth rate is the identity's own annualized log change, so the four eras and the latest-window reading are one computation, not two methods.
Each internal era boundary is also tested shifted two quarters earlier and later, independently. The 2019 boundary's forward shift lands inside the record's own documented COVID-19 shock window and is reported as uninterpretable for that reason, never smoothed into an average.
The record's per-person peak and how the latest level compares with it are both identified by a direct scan of the full quarterly series, never assumed from a single window.
Full four-term coverage begins in 1991, the fully aligned floor across all seven core series. A two-term (population and per-person) context runs back to the start of the real GDP series; the four-term identity without the measured-hours subsplit is available for any window entirely within the labour force survey's own floor. Every figure states which coverage tier it belongs to.
A separate illustrative presentation reads the pre-1991 record in three windows (1961-1970, 1970-1980, 1980-1991): real GDP, population, and per-person growth throughout, with the four-term identity added for the one window (1980-1991) whose full span sits inside the labour force survey's coverage. This presentation is explicitly not a fifth era and carries its own coverage-tier disclosure on the page; it does not feed the four core eras above or change their boundaries.
The separate household-accounts panel uses Statistics Canada’s current and capital accounts: quarterly, nominal and seasonally adjusted at annual rates. It reconciles changes in saving to disposable income, consumption and the pension adjustment. These national totals are not the unadjusted household-group means in the distribution panels.
The separate annual actual-consumption panel includes household spending and individual services supplied by governments and non-profit institutions. The services are not cash income; the published component reconciliation residual is retained.

Decisive limitations

The output-per-worker sub-split's remaining derived line (the national-accounts / business-sector scope reconciliation) is the gap between whole-economy real GDP and the business-sector GDP concept the productivity and hours-worked indexes are built on — not an hours effect. That effect is now measured directly.
A Canada–United States comparison requires compatible measures and source terms suited to the intended use. This public educational Brief does not compare countries.
Era boundaries are conventions, not natural breakpoints. The disclosed sensitivity check shows the qualitative pattern is stable except where a shifted boundary lands inside the pandemic shock window, which this Receipt states rather than conceals.
The record before 1991 does not carry the same four-term coverage as 1991 onward: the illustrative pre-1991 windows show real GDP, population, and per-person growth throughout, and the four-term identity only where a window's full span sits inside the labour force survey's floor (1976 onward) -- never the measured-hours subsplit, which requires 1981 onward on both endpoints. Every pre-1991 figure states which measures it does and does not include.
Chained-dollar levels are not additive across periods; every era comparison uses log changes of the same series, never a difference of chained-dollar levels across widely separated periods.

Key sources and licences

Household sector debt service indicators — Statistics Canada Licence text read in full
Labour force characteristics, monthly, seasonally adjusted — Statistics Canada Licence text read in full
Population estimates, quarterly — Statistics Canada Licence text read in full
GDP, expenditure-based, quarterly — Statistics Canada Licence text read in full
Current and capital accounts — Households, Canada, quarterly — Statistics Canada Licence text read in full
Indexes of business sector labour productivity and related measures, quarterly, seasonally adjusted — Statistics Canada Licence text read in full
Household actual final consumption, by consumption category — Statistics Canada Licence text read in full
Household wealth by household characteristics — Statistics Canada Licence text read in full
Household income, consumption and saving by household characteristics — Statistics Canada Licence text read in full
Household income, consumption and saving by province and territory — Statistics Canada Licence text read in full

This Receipt names the public sources and method needed to reproduce the figures it covers. Corrections are dated and explained, with the earlier published record retained.