Business services

Those businesses offering information, data processing, professional, scientific, technical, and administrative and support services provide the advice and technical know-how that other businesses require. Examples of these are engineering, accounting, advertising and computer services.

Increasing in importance, these services have been growing steadily since the late 1990s. Today, these industries account for 6.6% of Canada's gross domestic and employs 1.2 million people.

More and more businesses today interact with their customers electronically via the Internet. Over 7% of private sector enterprises and 14% of the public sector sold products over the Internet for a combined total of $13.7 billion in 2002. Sales to consumers represented 77% of public sector Internet sales and 27% of private sector Internet sales.

Businesses services are a vital component of the knowledge economy and technical services are in great demand. The earnings of business services workers reflect this. Weekly earnings for computer and related services, for example, reached an average of $1,100 in 2002, nearly 60% higher than the overall average of all workers.