Local Area Economic Profile FAQs

The Local Area Economic Profiles (LAEP) is an economic model BC Stats developed to provide a consistent and detailed picture of local economies across British Columbia.  

It is an interactive Excel-based platform you can use to access and apply the full LAEP model. It provides a comprehensive suite of tools that allow you to generate detailed economic profiles for specific communities and analyze hypothetical economic scenarios using local-level data. The Toolkit includes two main components: 

• The LAEP Calculator enables you to estimate the economic impact of hypothetical scenarios, such as new business developments, policy changes, or shifts in employment. 
• The Profile Generator, which creates detailed economic profiles using local data. 

The LAEP Calculator, found within the LAEP Toolkit, enables you to estimate the local economic impact of hypothetical scenarios, such as new business developments, employment or policy changes.  

It uses an input-output model to estimate changes in employment, GDP, and other indicators based on user-defined scenarios. 

The Profile Generator, found within the LAEP Toolkit, creates detailed economic profiles for B.C. communities using local-level data, with features like interactive charts and comparative benchmarks. 

Unlike many tools that focus on provincial or national profiles, the LAEP delivers economic impact analysis specific to BC’s local areas, tailored to community-level needs with consistency across regions. 

It was created to fill a gap in regional economic analysis by offering consistent, comparable, and locally focused data to support evidence-based decision-making at the community level. 

It provides accessible, standardized insights that help users learn more about income and job profiles across key sectors at the local level, thus supporting informed planning and investment. 

The LAEP toolkit provides access to demographic, labour force, industry, and income data, presented through interactive charts, profiles, and calculators. 

The model divides the entire province into 103 economic local areas, ensuring full coverage of all municipalities and regional districts. 

The LAEP covers over 300 industries, organized according to the NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) codes. These industries are grouped into broader sectors such as health, education, manufacturing, retail, agriculture, and more. 

Yes. While it contains detailed data, it is designed to be user-friendly with guided inputs and visual outputs, providing insights which are understandable to everyone. 

While the LAEP provides a comprehensive view of local economies, one limitation is that it relies on available data, with the most recent from the 2021 Census. However, because it uses consistent and comparable data across all regions, it is still a reliable tool for understanding your local economy and supporting informed decisions. 

Yes, 2020 was an atypical year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which significantly disrupted economic activity. However, the LAEP model includes adjustments to account for these disruptions and ensure that the data remains as representative and useful as possible for long-term planning and analysis. 

Yes, BC Stats updates the LAEP datasets periodically as new data becomes available from sources like the Census and Labour Force Survey. 

Everyone can benefit from the insights provided by the LAEP, but it is especially useful for those who apply economic data in their work, such as local governments, policy analysts, economic development organizations, investors, businesses, researchers, and planners. 

Indigenous Governments and communities can use the LAEP to support strategic planning, guide economic development initiatives and make informed community-focused decisions. 

One of the benefits of this tool is its ability to model the impact on the local economy of an economic shock that leads either to creation or loss of jobs in the area. What is more, the analysis also shows how job numbers in all sectors are affected by these shocks. 

The tool can be used by the B.C. government in forecasting economic impacts of capital investment or social assistance programs in local areas and in the province as a whole. It also allows government users to estimate impacts associated with business starts or closures in specific areas.