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SINCE 1946 THE Department of Labour of the government of Canada has conducted a sample survey of the employment forecasts of approximately 800 establishments in selected industries. The forecasts solicited by this survey, known as the "Employment Forecast Survey" or "EFS," are made each quarter by employers for target dates three and six months in the future. Until the end of 1956 these forecasts were used to project available indexes of actual industrial employment to these target dates as predictions of their future magnitudes. These projected employment indexes, or EFS indexes, were published each quarter, together with supplementary material, in a report given restricted circulation within the Canadian government. The dissertation constitutes a description, analysis, and evaluation of the EFS employment predictions for the manufacturing industries.The study is based almost exclusively upon data secured from three sources: the EFS predictions included in the quarterly Employment Forecast Survey reports of the Department of Labour; the actual and forecast employment of the sample establishments as recorded in the confidential files of the Department of Labour; and the actual employment indexes for the manufacturing industries published monthly by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Ottawa.Aside from the general introductory and preliminary descriptive material, which places the EFS predictions in a wider context and explains their origin, the study consists of two parts. In the first part, an attempt is made to describe and evaluate the errors of the published EFS predictions as estimates of the direction and magnitude of the non-seasonal changes in the corresponding actual employment indexes. This investigation discloses that the EFS predictions were of only slightly greater reliability than sets of hypothetical predictions derived by a simple, alternative technique. Furthermore, the analysis suggests that the EFS predictions were in error largely because they tended to underestimate the magnitude of the non-seasonal changes in the corresponding actual indexes and frequently * A dissertation completed at Duke University in 1957. 9