Dictionary, Census of Population, 2021
Location of workplace

Definition

Location of workplace refers to the geographic location of the person's workplace for those who have a usual place of work or who work at home.

Statistical unit(s)

• Employed person

Classification(s)

• Standard Geographical Classification (SGC) 2021
• Variant of Standard Geographical Classification (SGC) 2021 for Statistical area classification

Reported in

2021 and 2016 (25% sample); 2011^{Footnote 1} (30% sample); 2006, 2001, 1996, 1991, 1986 and 1981 (20% sample). For availability prior to 1981, please refer to Appendix 2.1.

Reported for

Population aged 15 years and over, in private households, with a job or absent from their job or business during the week of Sunday, May 2 to Saturday, May 8, 2021, and who reported having a usual place of work or working at home.

Previously, in other census cycles, early enumeration was conducted in remote, isolated parts of the provinces and territories in the months leading up to the May enumeration. Because of COVID-19, there was no early enumeration for the 2021 Census. Collection procedures—especially in collective dwellings and remote, northern, First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities—were redesigned to ensure the census was conducted in the best possible way, using a safe and secure approach.

Question number(s)

Direct variable: Question 51

Responses

For persons who indicated they 'Worked at home (including farms)' or 'Worked at the address specified below' (a usual place of work), the street address, city, town, village, township, municipality or Indian reserve, province or territory and postal code of their workplace were used to assign geographic codes identifying the location of workplace.

The location of workplace geographic codes are assigned to each record with a usual place of work, from the top of the hierarchy—province or territory—to as low on the hierarchy as the dissemination block. The hierarchy of standard geographic areas is presented in the geography section.

Data on locations of workplace are usually disseminated at the province or territory, census metropolitan area, census agglomeration, census division and census subdivision levels of geography, but can be produced at other levels, including census tract and dissemination area, upon request. Aggregating location of workplace representative points can approximate non-standard or user-defined query areas, such as traffic zones.

For those who work at home, the place of residence geographic location is the place of work geographic location.

Remarks

Data on persons working in census metropolitan areas or census agglomerations are coded to a blockface, dissemination block or dissemination area representative point.

Data on persons working outside census metropolitan areas or census agglomerations are coded to either a census subdivision representative point, a dissemination area, a dissemination block or a dissemination blockface. Consequently, due to a possible mix of codes, the census subdivision is the smallest geographic area with good quality data available for these areas.

Note(s)