Jobs and income

The lure of Mother Nature in remote communities hasn't been enough to keep Canadians from moving downtown. In 1931, 1 in 3 people were living on farms compared with approximately 1 in 40 in 2001. Part of this decline is a result of having fewer people directly employed in the primary industries. The Labour Force Survey shows that in 1976, 717,000 Canadians depended directly on the primary industries for their paycheques, 7.3% of the Canadian workforce. By 2002, this number decreased to 602,000, or 3.9% of the Canadian workforce.

Some of the workers who choose to stay in these fields, however, are paid quite well. The mining and oil industry, which was so famous for its motley company of packsack miners and wildcatters, is now renowned for how it rewards them. Miners' and oil workers' average weekly pay of $1,168 in 2002 was 72% higher than the overall industrial average.