Although the labour market is clearly improving, with threequarters of the jobs lost now recovered, too many Canadians who want to work are still out of a job, and many of those still employed are working fewer hours than they would like (see Appendix Chart 1). As painful as our recession was, Canada suffered less than most other advanced economies.
Consumption, housing, and employment in Canada all held up substantially better than in the United States. The cumulative fall in Canadian real GDP of 3.3 per cent compares with declines of 3.6 in the United States, about 5 per cent in the euro area, and more than 8 per cent in Japan. Canada’s better performance can be explained by two factors.