As 2022 begins to wind up, it is worth taking a look at how Thunder Bay’s economy is doing using less traditional indicators to shed light not only on its economic performance but the perennial question of whether its population is growing or not. One way of looking at Thunder Bay’s economy and making some comparisons to other centers is the use of Tax Filer data available from Statistics Canada. The number of T1 Tax Filers can be used as a correlate of not only population numbers but also incomes and economic activity.
Figure 1 plots the number of tax filers by year from 2000 to 2001 in the Thunder Bay CMA with a linear trend. There has definitely been some growth in the number of tax filers over the last few decades. From 88,240 T1s filed in 2000 to 92,660 in 2021, Thunder Bay has seen a 5 percent increase in the total number of tax filers between those two years though numbers do fluctuate from year to year. Thunder Bay’s CMA population in the 2001 Census was 121,986 and its CMA population in the 2021 Census was 123,258 – an increase of 1 percent. One would expect the number of tax filers reporting income is somewhat a more robust count than the number of people filling out the census at least in terms of compliance.
If the 5 percent growth Tax Filer growth rate was applied to Thunder Bay’s population in 2001, then in 2021 one would have a CMA population of 128,085. So, in response to the question of whether or not there are more people living in Thunder Bay than the official census count states, the answer it is perhaps so. Even so, it is not the tens of thousands of people that seems to have seized the imagination of local politicians lobbying for more resources. At least that is assuming that these tens of thousands of additional people have employment and are reporting an income. Of course, if they are not working and therefore not reporting an income or are working and not reporting an income, well those are entirely different matters that should definitely concern the federal and provincial governments.
Delving deeper into the numbers, Figure 2 plots the average annual growth rate of the number of T1 Tax filers over the period 2001 to 2021 for Thunder Bay, as well as Toronto, Hamilton, Greater Sudbury, and Ontario as a whole. It appears that Thunder Bay’s average annual tax filer growth rate is well below that for Ontario and Toronto but also Hamilton and Greater Sudbury. Thus, another indicator that while we are growing, we are not growing as quickly as other population centres.
Finally, Figure 3 plots average annual T1 Tax Filer Income and it illustrates that while average income has grown, Thunder Bay is below Ontario and also below the other three comparison cities in the chart. As of 2021, average tax filer income in Thunder Bay is $53,289 compared to $56,691 in Greater Sudbury, $57,936 in Hamilton and $59,410 in Toronto with the average for Ontario at $56,893. Given that average rents and cost of living in Thunder Bay have grown to levels not incomparable to southern Ontario cities, this would suggest that many in Thunder Bay are currently quite stretched when it comes to their finances.
So, there you have yet another set of performance indicators on Thunder Bay’s economy.