inFact Research Series
inFact research series deliver focused insights across Canada’s economy, workforce, industries, public policy, and more. Each series addresses the questions leaders face in their day-to-day work, providing key research findings, trends, and benchmarks to inform strategy, guide planning, and support sound decision-making.
Explore the series below to see how inFact can help move your priorities forward.
Economic and market outlook
Macro, regional, and industry intelligence to inform planning and forecasting.
Our Canadian Outlook, released quarterly, covers business investment, energy, financial markets, government, household consumption, household income and employment, housing, industry trends, and international trade for the next five years, along with a longer-term 20-year view.
Learn more about the five-year and 20-year outlooks
How this series can help you:
- Make projections about industry performance within a broader national context.
- Explore Canadian household consumption trends and adjust business plans accordingly.
- Get invaluable insights into the factors driving national economic growth or contraction.
Take the pulse of Canada’s economic health with GrowthNow. This product uses current or recent economic data to estimate the GDP growth rate for the current quarter—before official figures are published.
How this series can help you:
- Get an up-to-date understanding of economic conditions and trends in between official data releases.
- Discover the key economic trends driving GDP growth fluctuations to help you better understand the changes.
- Make well-informed decisions with a monthly analysis of the Canadian economy, including essential insights to help you adapt to changing conditions.
Understand the relative and absolute health of the housing market across Canada with our Housing Market Update. This monthly report provides up-to-date resale and construction information for 24 metropolitan centres, plus a comprehensive national overview. It also presents the factors underpinning housing demand, including interest rates, demographics, and incomes. Importantly, the report scales housing activity by market size, enabling like-for-like comparisons, and presents data in interactive, easy-to-read charts that are accessible on any device.
How this series can help you:
- Gain insights into interest rates, demographics, and incomes.
- Conduct comparative analyses between specific cities to identify regional disparities in common trends.
- Make data-driven recommendations about housing policies.
Our widely respected Index of Business Confidence captures the views of senior executives at private Canadian corporations and provides important guidance for Canadian financial policy-makers. The index delves into the state of sales and finances at these executives’ businesses, their investment plans, and their expectations for the Canadian economy over the next six months.
How this series can help you:
- Assess business sentiment and anticipate potential changes in business behaviour.
- Tailor your strategies to address business concerns and support business confidence.
- Generate a more reliable forecast of future economic conditions.
The Index of Consumer Confidence serves as a crucial indicator of near-term sales for companies in the consumer products sector. Based on Signal49 Research’s survey of Canadian households, this index tracks consumer optimism about current and expected financial positions, short-term employment outlook, inflation expectations, and major purchase intentions.
How this series can help you:
- Project future sales trends and their impact on your operational plans.
- Assess the state of the economy and anticipate changes.
- Tailor your planning or policies to support consumer spending and overall economic stability.
Our Industry Lens reports present timely analysis of the key issues affecting Canadian industries and include detailed five-year economic and financial forecasts. Topics include accommodation, agriculture, banking, food manufacturing, residential construction, motor vehicle parts and manufacturing, retail trade, and many more.
How this series can help you:
- Understand the factors at play in Canadian industries and learn which are experiencing growth or contraction.
- Get in-depth analysis and insights into a wide range of sector dynamics.
- Identify emerging trends and patterns in various industries.
Equip policy-makers, advisors, analysts, strategy and planning managers, and economists with current insights and analysis to support business strategies and decision-making processes. The first of its kind, Canadians’ Inflation Expectations is a monthly economic indicator of the anticipated rate of inflation over the next year and the next three years, based on a survey of Canadian households.
How this series can help you:
- Adapt business plans to align with what consumers are spending or willing to spend.
- Choose information that’s relevant to your business, with results broken down by respondents’ region, employment status, income, age, and housing type.
- Better prepare your business for changes in consumer behaviour.
Our Major City Insights, released quarterly, provide a mathematical representation of the economies of major urban centres across Canada, incorporating unique city-level historical data meticulously constructed by Signal49 Research’s forecasting team.
How this series can help you:
- Understand how inflation rates, local GDP, employment, and population growth are impacting Canada’s major cities.
- Track economic trends over time to identify emerging risks and opportunities.
- City-level historical data offers insights into the long-term trajectory of urban economies.
The Provincial Fiscal Outlook leverages Signal49 Research’s robust macroeconomic models to provide an independent forecast of each province’s finances, including projections for revenue, spending, debt, and other key financial indicators. Intended primarily for provincial finance ministries, this annual report delivers data and insights to help refine budget planning and improve long-term fiscal sustainability.
How this series can help you:
- Evaluate the provinces’ fiscal health using an independent, unbiased forecast and analysis.
- Support long-term fiscal planning with downloadable forecast data for key financial indicators.
- Explore economic factors and trends that could affect provincial budget projections.
Gain insight into Canada’s unique regional and provincial economies with the Provincial Outlook. Updated annually (20-year) and quarterly (five-year), this report provides detailed analysis and forecasts for all provinces, including GDP by industry and key economic indicators for the next five years, along with a 20-year perspective.
Learn more about the five-year and 20-year outlooks
How this series can help you:
- Leverage insights into provincial economies, such as population growth, household debt, imports/exports, housing trends, sectoral contributions, and more, to support business planning.
- Anticipate the impact of provincial economies on the overall Canadian economy.
- Focus your efforts, allocate your resources, and benchmark business outcomes with provincial trends in mind.
Our Territorial Outlook, updated annually, offers detailed analysis and forecasts for all territories, including GDP by industry and key economic indicators. It serves as the foundation for a 20-year economic outlook.
How this series can help you:
- Leverage insights into sectoral contributions to territorial economies and understand regional trends.
- Anticipate challenges and opportunities and develop strategic plans for business development and growth.
Our Travel Markets Outlook, released annually, serves the travel and tourism industry by providing sound insights and travel activity forecasts for both Canadians and visitors. Timely and insightful data interpretation help you stay up-to-date on trends and market intelligence with consolidated global data, annual regional forecasts, and seasonal travel surveys.
How this series can help you:
- Understand the risks and opportunities at play in Canada’s travel industry.
- Analyze consolidated global data to identify trends and patterns in travel behaviour.
- Assess the competitiveness of the travel industry, identify emerging markets, and evaluate opportunities for growth and investment.
Our U.S. Outlook, released annually (20-year) and quarterly (five-year), feeds into both our national and regional forecasts, enriching our Canadian Outlook. Seamlessly integrating data from both sides of the border, this outlook offers precise insights for navigating the dynamic economic landscape.
Learn more about the five-year and 20-year outlooks
How this series can help you:
- Inform projections and analyses of economic conditions, both in the United States and globally.
- Identify cross-border trends and their anticipated effects on Canadian sectors, industries, and regional economies.
HR, labour market, and workforce
Insights, benchmarks, and trends on total rewards, employee preferences, and engagement to help you stay competitive.
Our Benefits Benchmarking report, released every three years, helps businesses develop and fine-tune their team management practices through comparison with other organizations in similar regions or industries. Divided into four parts—inclusive benefit offerings, employer-sponsored benefit plans, flexible work arrangements, and mental health and wellness benefits—our reports provide timely insights into Canadian organizations’ benefits offerings.
How this series can help you:
- Align your benefits packages with industry trends to balance talent investments while remaining competitive.
- Use insights into flexible work arrangements to inform your internal strategies.
- Stay informed about industry practices and benchmarks to proactively adapt and optimize your team management practices.
The Canadian Hiring Index, created by Signal49 Research in partnership with Vicinity Jobs, provides comprehensive, timely data on hiring activity across the country. This monthly series, the only one of its kind in Canada, uses job posting data to deliver crucial insights into labour demand across regions and industries, with a focused Labour Tightness Indicator at both the national and provincial levels.
How this series can help you:
- Assess the competition for talent across different regions and sectors.
- Evaluate the health of the labour market and identify areas of strength or weakness.
- Gauge the strength of the Canadian economy and anticipate changes in economic conditions.
This annual report provides a reliable forecast for compensation and HR professionals nationwide, empowering them to secure talent in today’s competitive marketplace. Access in-depth analysis and insights on topics such as legislative shifts, pay equity, budgeting and forecasting, performance management, compliance, and more.
How this series can help you:
- Explore pay equity and performance management insights and benchmark against what other organizations have done to create a positive work environment.
- Delve into industry functions and the specific roles that apply to you. Benchmark against similar organizations and pinpoint areas for improvement.
- Use our budget insights to allocate resources effectively and ensure that salaries, bonuses, and other benefits align with your financial goals.
The Employee Perspectives research series is Canada’s first comprehensive study of employee preferences across all aspects of total rewards. It provides HR leaders with valuable insights and data about what matters most to Canadian workers, helping you craft better retention and attraction strategies.
How this series can help you:
- Reframe your recruitment messaging to attract top talent.
- Redesign your employee experience to improve retention.
- Invest in benefits that are valuable to your workforce.
The Employee Relations Trends is an interactive dashboard that gives you fast, flexible access to key labour relations data from across Canada. Track union wage settlements, work stoppages, and collective agreements by industry and region, and get clear visuals and expert insights—all in one place.
How this series can help you:
- Prepare for bargaining meetings with data and trends in wage increases for unionized employees in major settlements since 2000.
- Track ratification trends by exploring recent patterns in agreement ratification by region or industry.
- Leverage historical wage data to guide fair and informed salary increases, ensuring competitiveness with comparable organizations.
The HR Insights series delivers key findings from relevant worldwide research and a national survey conducted by Signal49 Research. These quarterly data briefings highlight innovative approaches and practices in specific HR policy areas presented alongside Canadian benchmarking data, giving you all the information you need to determine how your policies and practices compare with others.
How this series can help you:
- Get timely national benchmark data related to a specific HR policy or practice.
- Explore how other organizations create and execute their HR policies and practices.
- Learn about new and forward-thinking ideas to enhance your current HR strategy.
Make sure your HR strategies remain responsive to the dynamic business landscape . Our quarterly survey, encompassing over 200 organizations across Canada, yields timely HR benchmarking data for four essential metrics: turnover rates for both unionized and non-unionized employees, retirement rates, absenteeism rates, and job vacancy rates.
How this series can help you:
- Understand the current business environment and where you stand.
- Validate your strategy against up-to-date metrics.
- Stay responsive in the day-to-day execution of your HR strategy.
This series explores trending topics in human resources using two methods: spotlight reports and case studies. Spotlight reports are short, easily digestible pieces that examine HR best practices, including flexible work arrangements, inclusive practices, workplace mental health supports, and ways to support retirement-age workers. Case studies will highlight Canadian organizations that have adopted these best practices and examine how, in doing so, they have improved their workplace’s diversity, wellbeing, and productivity.
How this series can help you:
- Understand emerging HR practices and their impact on business strategy.
- Bring a fresh perspective to your workplace wellness strategy and use our case studies to reflect on the real impact of HR trends.
- Benchmark your organization’s HR practices against the best practices highlighted in the reports.
Our annual Labour Relations Outlook delivers insights into the labour market, equipping market leaders, managers, and policy-makers with a clear understanding of the current negotiating landscape and its defining issues. These reports can be used to support collective bargaining, union organizing, labour-law compliance, workforce planning, and reputation management.
How this series can help you:
- Use expert insights to develop your negotiation strategy.
- Leverage insights to support your positions, propose informed solutions, and contribute to more successful negotiations.
- Enable proactive planning and responses to potential organizing efforts.
The Skills Trends series is the first research series in Canada providing current information on in-demand skills based on the Canadian labour market. Each quarterly release spotlights an emerging skill or skills cluster, offering insights into the implications of these skills and recommended responses for PSI leaders.
How this series can help you:
- Understand changes to skill trends and their impact on enrolment.
- Guide your program development strategy with an eye on skills gaps.
- Leverage actionable recommendations to move quickly on emerging opportunities.
Public policy, higher education, and inclusive growth
Evidence-based insights to support inclusive workforce development and future-of-work readiness.
The Higher Education Trends (HETR) publication maps the landscape of Canadian post-secondary education (PSE) and provides institutional leaders with a national overview of student statistics in four pivotal areas: enrollment, outcomes, mobility, and finances. Each quarterly release will focus on one area in depth to provide data-rich information and analysis.
How this series can help you:
- Benchmark your institution’s success against other Canadian post-secondary institutions (PSIs).
- Evaluate your institution’s social and economic impact.
- Understand the trends at play across Canadian PSIs.
This quarterly series highlights successful Indigenous enterprises and leaders within a specific industry. Each Spotlight includes two to three in-depth business profiles or interviews that examine how the subject grew, innovated, and asserted new models of success on their own terms. The Spotlight Series offers a close-up view of lived experience, contextual knowledge, and community priorities.
Coming soon.
How this series can help you:
- Learn about sector-specific strategies and best practices in tourism, energy, real estate, finance, tech, and other industries.
- Gain insights into navigating systemic barriers and creating culturally grounded business models.
- Get practical take-aways for policy, investment, and Indigenous business support.
Explore how innovation is taking shape across Canada’s provinces and regions. This two-part series includes provincial dashboards and quarterly regional deep dives, offering insights into the strengths, gaps, and emerging trends in innovation ecosystems. Drawing on a broad set of indicators, these reports are designed to help policy-makers and analysts understand the evolving landscape of innovation performance.
How this series can help you:
- Compare provincial innovation performance with Canadian and OECD benchmarks using interactive dashboards and data visuals.
- Stay on top of emerging innovation trends with annual national assessments and quarterly regional briefings.
- Uncover region-specific tech specializations, government programs, and economic opportunities to inform policy, investment, and program design.
The annual ROI of Higher Education report provides a comprehensive analysis of and insights into the fiscal and economic benefits of post-secondary education. Using Statistics Canada data and proprietary data from Signal49 Research, ROI of Higher Education is the only report in Canada to demonstrate return on investment in post-secondary education and highlight key variances across programs and regions.
How this series can help you:
- Advocate for funding using credible data and insights.
- Undertake strategic program prioritization based on economic and workforce impact.
- Understand the ROI for various fields of study and regions.