Effects of Exchange Rates on Employment in Canada

Under a flexible exchange rate regime, the Canadian economy is constantly affected by fluctuations in exchange rates. This paper focuses on the effect of the exchange rate on employment in Canada. We find that appreciation of the Canadian dollar has significant effects on employment in manufacturing industries; such effects are mostly associated with the export-weighted exchange rate, but not the import-weighted exchange rate. Meanwhile, the exchange rate has little effect on jobs in non-manufacturing industries. Because the manufacturing sector accounts for only about 10 percent of employment in Canada, the overall effect of the exchange rate on employment is small. In addition, we quantify the loss of manufacturing employment associated with a commodity market boom, during which the Canadian dollar tends to appreciate. Our estimates suggest that when commodity prices increase by 15.77 percent (one standard deviation of annual change in commodity prices between 1994 and 2010), manufacturing employment in Canada decreases by 0.8 percent, which is about 0.08 percent of the total employment.