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August 25, 2021INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, 2019 (ACTUAL), 2020 (PRELIMINARY) AND 2021 (INTENTIONS) Statistics Canada has recently released Industrial Research and Development (R&D) characteristics, including 2021 intentions, preliminary actuals for 2020 and characteristics of industrial R&D spending/personnel across provinces for 2019. Results from 2014 and beyond are not directly comparable to earlier data.
In 2019, Nova Scotia businesses spent $188 million on research and development, up 18.2% from the previous year. Nova Scotia’s total business enterprise expenditures on R&D accounted for 0.40% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2019, up from 0.35% in the previous year.
Nationally, businesses spent $21.7 billion on in-house R&D, an increase of 3.8% over 2018 spending. Canada’s R&D spending accounted for 0.94% of its GDP in 2019, slightly up from 0.93% in the previous year.
Quebec (1.23%), Ontario (1.15%), and British Columbia (0.92%) have the largest share of their economy in research and development expenditures in 2019.
As a share of GDP, business R&D expenditures in Nova Scotia has been somewhat volatile over the last six years. The share of industrial R&D in total GDP in Nova Scotia increased from 2014 (0.305) to 2016 (0.44%) but were on a downward trend from 2016 to 2018 (0.35%).
Nationally, the share of business R&D in GDP has been hovering around 0.92% over the last six years with increases recorded over the last two years.
In 2019, R&D personnel accounted for 0.53% of Nova Scotia’s business sector employment, posting the second largest share across the Atlantic provinces.
Nationally, business enterprise R&D personnel was 1.13% of Canada’s total business sector employment in 2019. The largest shares were recorded in Quebec (1.57%), Ontario (1.24%) and British Columbia (1.20%).
Over the last six years, the share business sector employment that has been business enterprise R&D personnel has generally been on a downward trend with spikes recorded in 2016 and 2019. The share of Nova Scotia’s R&D personnel peaked at 0.65% in 2016 before declining to 0.42% in 2018 and increasing to 0.53% in 2019.
In Canada, the share of R&D personnel in business sector employment was the highest at 1.15% in 2015. This ratio declined to 1.01% in 2017 but has been stable at 1.13% over 2018 and 2019.
In 2019, there were 1,703 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs for in-house research and development in Nova Scotia. This was an increase of 26% from the previous year. Researchers and research managers (1,123) was the most dominant occupational category among most Nova Scotia’s business enterprise R&D personnel in 2019. The rest of the R&D personnel was divided among research and development technical, administrative and support staff (483), and consultants and contractors (96).
Preliminary estimates show that Canada’s business enterprise R&D spending declined by 3.2% from the previous year to $20,957 million in 2020. National R&D expenditures are expected to stay at a similar $20,972 million in 2021.
Looking at the R&D spending by industry, majority of the R&D spending in Canada was undertaken by businesses in service sectors. The computer systems designs and related services sector had the largest R&D spending ($3,922 million) in 2019. This was followed by research and development: sciences/engineering ($2,108 million) and wholesale sector ($2,070 million).
In 2019, Canadian businesses with revenues higher than $500 million had the largest share of total R&D spending accounting for 36% of total R&D expenditures. This was followed by businesses with revenues between $5 million and $10 million (17%) and revenues between $100 million and $500 million (15%) in 2019.
Source: Statistics Canada,Table 27-10-0333-01 Business enterprise in-house research and development expenditures, by industry group based on the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), country of control and expenditure types (x 1,000,000); Table 27-10-0334-01 Business enterprise in-house research and development expenditures, by country of control and revenue group (x 1,000,000); Table 27-10-0341-01 Business enterprise in-house research and development characteristics, by industry group based on the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), country of control and provinces and territories; Table 36-10-0222-01 Gross domestic product, expenditure-based, provincial and territorial, annual (x 1,000,000); Table 36-10-0480-01 Labour productivity and related measures by business sector industry and by non-commercial activity consistent with the industry accounts
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