By mid-March, all of Canada was into a lockdown situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Statistics Canada is producing regular updates on the economic impact of the pandemic, but this is problematic since most reports, such as those regarding household consumption, are produced on a quarterly basis and most of the pandemic has been in Q2, which has not yet ended. Consumption in most categories was up year-over-year in Q1, because the pandemic only affected the last couple of weeks of the quarter (StatsCan, 2020).
Some figures that have been released for April showed major declines in consumption that will be evident in the Q2 statistics. Automobiles and minivans were down 91.3%, for example (StatsCan, 2020). What data is available shows dramatic reductions in things like imports, transportation consumption and that sort of thing. Imports, exports and manufacturing indicators are all way down for April as well, providing a general indication that consumption of all types declined steeply in that month, Real GDP declined 2.1% in the quarter, again supporting that all consumption declined. Durables would naturally decline in a recession as the unemployment rate increases and consumer sentiment declines. Non-durables would probably take a hit in most categories for the same reason – retail closures in particular would have affected these, and only categories like groceries and alcohol would be expected to increase. Semi-durables probably suffered from retail closures but things like remote work might have increased consumer spending on some items within this category as that consumption shifted, rather than went away.
While StatsCan doesn’t have many hard numbers yet, the numbers that it has released strongly indicate that consumption of all types has declined significantly as the result of the pandemic for April. Some expansion in May and June would be expected as some provinces exited lockdown, but for the most part, the pandemic has had a significant cooling effect on the Canadian economy.
References
StatsCan (2020) Canadian economic dashboard and COVID-19. StatsCan Retrieved June 29, 2020 from https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2020009-eng.ht
StatsCan (2020) Coronavirus. Statistics Canada. Retrieved June 29, 2020 from https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/subjects/society_and_community/coronavirus
StatsCan (2020) Detailed household final consumption expenditure. StatsCan. Retrieved June 29, 2020 from https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3610012401
