AI Analysis: Gross domestic product (GDP) at basic prices, by industry, monthly

Executive Summary

Canada's monthly GDP at basic prices grew 92.6% over nearly three decades, rising from $1.2 trillion in January 1997 to $2.3 trillion in November 2024 (chained 2017 dollars), with services-producing industries consistently dominating economic output. The dataset spans 249 unique NAICS industry categories across 335 months, revealing a heavily right-skewed distribution where a small number of large aggregate sectors drive the majority of reported value. Only 6 outlier months were detected in the entire series, with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 producing the most extreme single-month swings in the dataset's history.

Key Findings

• Total Canadian GDP grew 92.6% from January 1997 to November 2024, rising from $1,200,427M to $2,312,337M in chained 2017 dollars, with services-producing industries accounting for a consistently larger share than goods-producing industries throughout the entire period.
• The dataset contains 200,995 records across 249 unique NAICS industry categories, with GDP values ranging from $0 to $2,318,643M — a mean of $34,798M versus a median of only $4,602M, confirming a heavily right-skewed distribution driven by a few large aggregate sectors.
• 75% of all monthly industry-level GDP observations fall below $15,382M, while the top values exceed $2.3 trillion, illustrating the vast scale difference between niche sub-sectors and broad economic aggregates.
• The top 10 industries show very strong co-movement over time, with an average absolute correlation of 0.837; Real Estate and Real Estate & Rental industries are almost perfectly correlated (r=1.000), and the All Industries aggregate correlates at r=0.999 with the Business Sector.
• Only 6 outlier months were identified out of 335 total observations (less than 2%), using a threshold of monthly GDP changes below -1.31% or above +1.78%, with the COVID-19 pandemic in March–April 2020 almost certainly responsible for the most extreme values.
• Two major economic shocks are clearly visible in the time series: the 2008–2009 global financial crisis and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, both appearing as sharp dips before recovery, against an otherwise sustained long-run upward growth trajectory.
• The dataset offers four analytical dimensions — Date × Industry × Seasonal Adjustment × Price Measure — across 747 unique time series (VECTOR IDs), providing highly flexible options for economic analysis at both aggregate and sub-sector levels.