Types of Employment

"Core" employment accounts for 85% of jobs in the Tor-York East zone. This compares with 62% for the Greater Golden Horseshoe as a whole, suggesting that jobs in the TYE are significantly specialized in the core, tradeable activities that drive the regional economy. In fact, the TYE has the highest share of core employment of all three GGH megazones. Employment by planning category and sector1 is shown in Table 2 in the Appendix.

Almost all the Zone's core employment falls into three sectors:

* Finance and business services;

* Manufacturing, construction, and utilities;

* Warehousing and transportation.

The district shows a strong specialization in finance and business services, which accounts for 43% (46,000) of TYE jobs, compared with 22% of jobs for the GGH as a whole. The TYE megazone is the most finance- and business services-specialized of the three GGH megazones (although the absolute number of jobs is still lower than in the Airport Megazone, which has about 60,000 jobs in this category).

Within the finance and business services sector, finance and banking accounted for 7,995 jobs in 2011, insurance another 4,395, and real estate 2,590. On the business services side, the most significant industry is computer systems design, with 8,210 jobs. Other business services with a significant presence in the district include architecture, engineering, and related work, with 4,900 jobs; accounting and related work with 2,170 jobs; and administrative and support activities, such as back-office uses or employment services, with 5,385 jobs.

Employment in the manufacturing, utilities, and construction category consists mostly of manufacturing employment - with 14,490 of the 19,190 jobs in this industry in 2011. Computer and electronic product manufacturing was by far the most significant manufacturing industry, with 3,085 jobs, followed by printing with 2,450 jobs, and transportation equipment manufacturing with 1,000 jobs.

The area also shows a strong specialization in warehousing and transportation, which accounted for 19% of employment in the TYE in 2011, compared with 10% for the GGH as a whole.

tor-york_east_2011_employment_by_sector_chart

Almost all employment in warehousing and transportation is found in the wholesale sector, which accounted for 18,310 of 20,575 jobs in this category in 2011. About half of the wholesale employment was accounted for by the machinery, equipment, and supplies wholesale subsector - including 6,800 jobs in computer and communications equipment wholesaling.

In brief, computer-related services and manufacturing; finance, insurance, and real estate; architecture and engineering; and wholesaling - especially machinery equipment, and supplies - are the dominant types of employment and industries in the TYE megazone.

Computer-related employment, which spans the finance and business services, wholesaling and manufacturing categories, represents about 18,000 jobs altogether,2 indicating an important computer-related industry cluster located here.


[1] The planning categories used here (industrial, offices, etc.) are designed to link processes of economic restructuring and change with built environment characteristics relevant to planning. Shares do not necessarily add to 100% as a result of data suppression associated with breaking down data by NAICS code and census tracts.

[2] This figure is the sum of employment in computer and electronic product manufacturing (NAICS 334), computers and communications equipment wholesaler-distributors (NAICS 4173), and computer systems design and related services (NAICS 5415).