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The official Chinese labour market indicators have been seen as problematic, given their small cyclical movement and their only-partial capture of the labour force. In our paper, we build a monthly Chinese labour market conditions index (LMCI) using text analytics applied to mainland Chinese-language newspapers over the period from 2003 to 2017.

We estimate the effects of economic uncertainty on time use and discuss its macroeconomic implications. We develop a model to demonstrate that substitution between market and non-market work provides an additional insurance margin to households, weakening precautionary savings and labour supply and lowering aggregate demand, ultimately amplifying the contractionary effects of uncertainty.

The Canadian economy continues to grow at a solid pace, consistent with the Bank’s outlook in the January Monetary Policy Report Update.

Six months ago, at the time of the last Monetary Policy Report, the global economic and financial environment was volatile and highly uncertain because of the adverse situation in Asia and the fallout from the Russian debt moratorium.

With inflation remaining low for the sixth consecutive year, the Canadian economy recorded a strong expansion of about 4 per cent through 1997.

This is the second in a series of semi-annual reports designed to increase the transparency and understanding of Canadian monetary policy.

This Report presents the Bank of Canada’s assessment of the trend of inflation in Canada and explains the monetary policy actions deemed necessary to keep inflation within the Bank’s inflation-control target range.

In 1996 inflation remained within the Bank’s target range but was subject to downward pressure. The low rate of inflation contributed to a major easing in monetary conditions, and interest rates reached their lowest level in 30 years.

The Canadian economy regained strong momentum in 1999 as the U.S. economy remained vigorous, the global economy recovered, and commodity prices moved upwards.

Canada’s inflation-control targets establish a specific medium-term objective for monetary policy.