AI Analysis: Manufacturing sales, by industry for 15 Selected Census Metropolitan Areas

Executive Summary

Canadian manufacturing sales across 15 Census Metropolitan Areas nearly doubled over 17 years, rising 91.4% from $19.3 billion in January 2009 to $37.0 billion in January 2026, peaking at $46.0 billion in March 2023. The dataset — spanning 181,722 records across 31 NAICS industries — reveals a highly concentrated, right-skewed distribution where a mean of $326,605K dwarfs a median of $41,518K, reflecting a small number of dominant industries and regions driving the bulk of output. COVID-19 caused the sharpest disruption on record, with Windsor, Ontario posting the dataset's most extreme negative outlier in April 2020 (z=-3.65), while overall manufacturing sales fell 11% that year.

Key Findings

• Total manufacturing sales across 15 CMAs grew 91.4% from $19.3 billion (January 2009) to $37.0 billion (January 2026), with an all-time peak of $46.0 billion recorded in March 2023.
• The distribution is strongly right-skewed: the mean sales value of $326,605K is nearly 8x the median of $41,518K, with 75% of all records falling below $204,965K.
• Windsor, Ontario recorded the dataset's single most extreme outlier — April 2020 manufacturing sales of $353 million (z=-3.65) — driven by COVID-19 auto plant shutdowns, contributing to an industry-wide 11% sales decline in 2020 versus 2019.
• Québec City posted unusually high sales in June 2022, reaching $2.51 billion (z=3.09), one of four CMAs — alongside Regina, Winnipeg, and Ottawa-Gatineau — that recorded significant positive outliers between 2022 and 2025.
• Railroad Rolling Stock Manufacturing [3365] is the most volatile industry in the dataset, with a coefficient of variation of 3.75 — far exceeding all other NAICS sectors analyzed.
• Approximately 36% of the dataset's value entries (~65,764 records) are missing, consistent with Statistics Canada's data suppression practices for low-count or confidential regional industry figures.
• Significant geographic concentration exists across the 15 CMAs, with major hubs like Toronto, Montréal, and Calgary driving disproportionately large average sales compared to smaller metros, as reflected in the wide gap between mean and median values at the regional level.