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September 23, 2022HALIFAX LOCAL BUSINESS CONDITIONS: SEPTEMBER 12-18, 2022 Statistics Canada has released real-time local business conditions from September 12 to September 18, 2022. Throughout this article, reference dates mean the start of the week.
From August 10 of 2020 to the week starting September 12 of 2022, the local business conditions index for Halifax has increased by 131.51%. London and Hamilton had the smallest gains. St. John's and Quebec City reported the strongest growth in business conditions over this period.
From the week starting September 5 to the week starting September 12, business conditions in Halifax decreased by 7.7%, the second consecutive decline after three consecutive weeks of gains. St. John's and Barrie reported the strongest gains while Kitchener reported the largest decline.
Compared with 4 weeks prior, business conditions were down 3.9% for Halifax. St. John's reported the largest increase in business conditions over this period. Kitchener and Saskatoon reported the largest declines. Note that these data are not adjusted for seasonality and changes may simply reflect regular seasonal patterns.
Compared with the same week a year ago, Halifax business conditions have improved by 25.5%. Calgary, Windsor and Guelph reported the largest improvements over this period. The smallest improvements were reported in Sherbrooke.
As the experimental business conditions index is both volatile and unadjusted for seasonality, a comparison of year-to-date averages may generate more stable (if less current) insights into changing business conditions.
Comparing the year-to-date average of the business conditions index with approximately the same weeks of 2021, business conditions were up 36.4% in Halifax. Victoria and Hamilton reported the slowest year-to-date growth while Calgary reported the fastest gain.
Halifax's business conditions generally follow trends observed in Canada's largest urban centres, though conditions were stronger in Calgary, Edmonton and Ottowa.
Compared with Canada's medium-sized urban centres, Halifax business conditions experienced larger declines in the winter months of both 2021 and 2022. Windsor, Quebec City and Regina all report notably stronger growth in business conditions than other medium-sized cities.
In recent months Halifax business conditions have been comparable to those in Canada's smaller urban centres but in the last two weeks, Halifax business conditions have fallen behind those in most smaller centres. Prior to 2022, Halifax business conditions generally lagged those in smaller urban centres. St. John's business conditions exhibit considerably more volatility than in other cities.
Notes
This experimental data product starts from information on the number of businesses listed in the business register in "business dense areas" of a large urban centre. Data from 2019 business locations provided baseline (ie: pre-pandemic) insight on business revenue and employment.
The data focus on 27 industries in particular: retail bakeries, furniture stores, electronics/appliance stores, building materials/garden supply stores, food/beverage stores, gas stations/convenience stores, clothing stores, cycling stores, book stores, general merchandise stores, florists, cinemas, dental offices, museums, zoos/gardens, amusement/theme parks, casinos, fitness/recreation centres, bowling alleys, drinking places, restaurants, and personal care services (such as hair care or esthetics).
Data on current operating conditions (open vs. closed) were collected from commercial application-program interfaces (API). Most of the information is drawn from Google's Places API, which is similar to what is available publicly on Google Maps, with supplementary information from APIs offered by Yelp Fusion and Zomato. Queries to the API are based on a sampling approach ('density-based cursory search') that focuses on the densest areas for business locations in the selected industries. Statistics Canada cautions that the sampling methods used do not follow standard statistical methods due to cost and technical limitations.
Data on current traffic volumes were drawn from TomTom's historical traffic information. As with operating conditions, the information was drawn from a sample of routes within identified business-dense areas. Statistics Canada cautions that traffic volume estimates and their relationship to business conditions may be sensitive to changing traffic patterns, construction/detours, and changes to business models such as curbside pickup or delivery.
The index of real-time local business conditions is estimated as the value of retail revenue, adjusted for both percentage of reported business closures as well as changes in traffic volumes from pre-pandemic levels.
The value of the index was set to 100 as of August 2020. As such, the index shows changes since then, but does not represent the variations in business conditions that existed in the initial period. A location with strong local business conditions in August 2020 would have less opportunity to grow than a location with weak conditions in the same month.
Source: Statistics Canada. Table 33-10-0398-01 Real-time Local Business Condition Index (RTLBCI)
Statistics Canada catalogue 71-607X. Real-Time Local Business Conditions Index: Concepts, data, methodology, https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2021/statcan/71-607-x/71-607-x2021017-eng.pdf, July 15, 2021
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