Having been weak since 2015, the purchasing managers' index (PMI) -- which represents the overall business conditions in the manufacturing sector -- has improved clearly of late in the advanced economies as well as the emerging and commodity-exporting economies (Chart 6). Looking at imports in emerging economies, those in the Chinese and the ASEAN economies bottomed out and then picked up.
More than one million Canadians work in this category, which grew by 7 per cent over the past year. Then there are categories like education, health care and public administration. Together, these industries employ about 5 million Canadians.