The report estimates that Canada lost 130,000 factory jobs in 2007 and will likely lose more this year as conditions worsen for manufacturers, particularly in Ontario and Quebec.
"In short, we are losing many of the high-quality, high-productivity jobs in manufacturing, not just the jobs in low-productivity industries," Beata Caranci, the bank's director of forecasting, wrote in the report.
The report found that 55 per cent of the 212,000 jobs lost in the sector in the past five years have been unionized, which tend to be higher paying and more productive.