Every month, The Canadian Real Estate Association compiles figures of existing homes and properties sold.

The average price of a house sold in August in Canada was $290,347 a drop of almost $14,000 over the last 12 months. Despite house prices rising in most provinces, the declines in expensive British Columbia and Alberta outweighed the gains elsewhere. CREA Chief Economist Gregory Klump said “Price declines in some of Canada’s more expensive housing markets will outweigh further price gains in other markets and continue pulling the national average price lower over the rest of the year and into 2009.”

Mr Klump argued that most Canadians are not under any financial duress to sell their home. Therefore, he said, “Canadian homebuyers should not expect to see the kind of price correction that’s underway in the United States, where overly indebted homeowners are selling into a housing market with a high volume of foreclosures.”

Newfoundland & Labrador had the highest average house price increase with an increase of over 20 percent on the year.

House Prices In Canada
August 2008

4 Nov 2008

More than one million workers in Canada were in skilled trades in 2007, with the vast majority of these workers being tradesmen (97% in 2007). A study by Statistics Canada showed that employment growth in skilled trades has been a steady 2.2 percent a year on average since the early 1990s. Skilled trades includes occupations such as plumbers, electricians, masons, carpenters, mechanics and crane operators where a license or certificate may be a required for work.

Average hourly earnings in 2007 were higher in the skilled trades ($22.36) than in other occupations ($21.02), reflecting in part the predominance of full-time jobs and the relatively high rate of unionisation. The highest earners were electricians ($25.26), crane operators ($24.61) and plumbers ($24.10).

Self-employment is a growing trend among the skilled trades. In 1987, 9 percent of those working in the trades were self-employed; by 2007, this had increased to 15 percent. Some trades experienced even higher growth rates, although their self-employment rates had not caught up to the non-trades.

Overall, 17 percent of workers in the trades were immigrants, lower than the 21 percent in the non-trades occupations combined. None of the trades had a higher proportion of immigrants than the non-trades. In 2007, 10 percent of plumbers were immigrants, the lowest proportion.

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The average Canadian weekly earnings of employees stood at $792.56 in August, up 0.2 percent from July. Compared with a year earlier, average weekly earnings were up 2.8 percent.

In August, earnings increased the most in the accommodation & food services sector (up by 8.6 percent annually). Health and social assistance, educational services and retail trade earnings all increased annually by over 4 percent.

Alberta and Saskatchewan had the strongest year-over-year earnings growth of all provinces at 4.9 percent and 4,8 percent respectively.

Canadian Average Weekly Earnings By Province
August 2008

Canadian Average Weekly Earnings By Industry
August 2008

3 Nov 2008