Of course, we cannot directly measure how much labour Canadians want to supply to the economy. We have to infer this measure by looking at actual participation rates and the hours actually worked each week. But these two variables tend to fluctuate with the ups and downs of the economic cycle.
At the Bank, we try to look through these fluctuations to get a sense of the trend of labour input over time. I mentioned earlier that growth in labour input has been an important factor in overall economic growth in recent decades. Where has this growth come from?