Under the Statistics Act , all Statistics Canada employees must take an oath of secrecy. Moreover, only employees who need to work directly with the questionnaires have access to them. The LFS provides a wide range of information on employment, unemployment, and labour participation. The information is available by demographic characteristics such as age, sex, level of education, and family characteristics. Information is also produced by industry, occupation, job tenure, class of worker, weekly hours, wages, and union coverage.
Results are available by province, census metropolitan area, and sub-provincial area.
The results from the Labour Force Survey have many uses. All levels of government rely on employment and unemployment information from the survey. For example, its information is used to determine Employment Insurance eligibility as well as the size and duration of the program s benefits. Data from the survey are also factored into the calculation of Gross Domestic Product, an aggregate measure of economic production. Among its many other uses, the Gross Domestic Product is an important factor in determining the size of transfers from the federal government to the provinces.