Changes in capacity utilization for various industries
- Prior 81.7%
- Canadian industries operated at 81.9% of their production capacity in the first quarter of 2023, a minor increase from 81.8% in the fourth quarter of 2022.
- The capacity utilization rate in the manufacturing sector increased by 1.0 percentage point to 78.1% in the first quarter.
- In the manufacturing sector, 13 out of 21 major manufacturing industry groups experienced an increase in capacity utilization, representing about 75% of the sector’s GDP .
- Transportation equipment manufacturing saw a significant rise of 3.7 percentage points to 80.7%, driven by increased activity in motor vehicle manufacturing (+29.1%) and higher exports of passenger cars and light trucks (+25.9%).
- Fabricated metal products manufacturing (+2.0 percentage points) and petroleum and coal product manufacturing (+3.0 percentage points) also contributed to the manufacturing sector’s overall gain.
- The mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction sector experienced a contraction, with capacity utilization falling 0.9 percentage points to 79.5% in the first quarter due to decreased activity in non-metallic mineral mining (-6.0%) and oil and gas contract drilling (-7.9%).
- The construction sector’s capacity utilization also fell slightly by 0.3 percentage points to 90.2% in the first quarter of 2023.
Better data. However, the USDCAD is being driven by the employment data which showed a decline in employment (-17.3K) and a rise in the unemployment rate to 5.2% from 5.0% last month.
USDCAD moves higher spurred by weaker jobs data