A construction worker at the site of the athlete's village for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. Payroll employment in Canada increased by 22,000 in December 2009, its fourth straight month of modest gains.A construction worker at the site of the athlete's village for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. Payroll employment in Canada increased by 22,000 in December 2009, its fourth straight month of modest gains. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)

Payroll employment in Canada increased by 22,000 in December 2009, its fourth straight month of modest gains.

Payroll employment is a measure that tracks the number of paid positions based on tax information submitted to the Canada Revenue Agency by businesses and excludes some volatile sectors, such as agriculture.

It has been on an upward trend since August 2009 but remains down 380,000 from its October 2008 peak, despite the recent gains, Statistics Canada said Thursday.

Tracking jobs

In broad terms, Statistics Canada's survey of employment, payrolls and hours tracks the number of jobs across the country by calculating tax remittances by businesses registered with the Canada Revenue Agency.

At regular intervals, registered firms must submit how much tax money they have withheld on behalf of how many employees. The changes in those figures represent the net change in jobs, agency spokesman Danielle Zietsma said.

In effect, it is a compilation of payroll positions. If one person has three jobs, the survey would count each of their paid positions as one job. The survey excludes workers who are self-employed or those who are taking unpaid leave at any given time.

It also excludes jobs in several sectors including agriculture, fishing and trapping, and religious organizations, as the agency deems them to be too volatile to track. It provides complementary information to the labour force survey, which is a voluntary survey of 110,000 households.

Gains in December were widespread, with 61 per cent of industries reporting gains, the highest share since October 2007.

There were only two sectors in which the majority of industries had job declines in December: transportation and warehousing, and public administration.

The construction sector has increased by 19,300 (2.4 per cent) since August after shedding 61,000 jobs in the first 10 months of the economic downturn.

Other industries with ties to construction have either had modest job growth or smaller declines in recent months.

Since August, the pace of job losses in manufacturing has slowed considerably to an average of 2,100 per month. But between October 2008, when overall employment peaked, and August 2009, manufacturing had shed over 19,400 jobs a month on average.

Average weekly earnings, including overtime, of payroll employees rose to $837.08 in December, up 2.8 per cent from December 2008. This was the fastest year-over-year growth in average weekly earnings since the peak in employment in October 2008.