K-12 schooling is crucial to the functioning of the national economy, argue David A. Green, Gaëlle Simard-Duplain, and Henry E. Siu in their latest Intelligence Memo. Depending on the sector of the economy, parents of school-aged children account for 6 to 22.5 percent of all workers. Eliminating in-person schooling reduces the amount of time parents have available to work, and therefore reduces income to those workers and the economy as a whole.
This Graphic Intelligence illustrates the share of GDP due to K-12 education, and the share of GDP created by working parents of school-aged children across various sectors of the Canadian economy. Taken as a whole, K-12 schooling accounts for 11.5 percent of GDP.
