Investment in employees on the rise: C.D. Howe

Canadian employers are investing more in their workforce, according to the C.D. Howe Institute.

Projections for 2012 show that Canadian businesses are set to invest more per worker than the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average — 105 cents per dollar across the group, the best performance against other developed countries since the 1990s.

In From Living Well to Working Well: Raising Canada’s Performance in Non-residential Investment, authors Benjamin Dachis and William B.P. Robson calculate that, this year, Canadian business investment per worker will rise to 91 cents per dollar invested in the United States, up from an average of 85 cents during the previous decade.

"Policies that enhance competition and remove biases against non-residential investment could boost capital spending by businesses and improve Canadian workers' prospects for higher incomes," said Dachis, senior policy analyst with C.D. Howe.

But the authors also point out that Canada’s improvement owes much to outperformance by resource-rich provinces, noting that Central Canada and the Maritime provinces are struggling