Monthly jobs and employment report, Canada

Youth (15-24) employment rose in October by +1.2% (+33,000), increasing more in male youth employment (+1.8%) than in female youth employment (+0.6%). While female individuals aged 55 and older decreased by -0.8% and males 55 and older rose by 0.3 percentage points. Core-Aged workforce saw little change.

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Employment grew mostly in business, building, and support services by +4.2% (+29,000) and Accommodation and food services by +1.1% (+12,000). On the other hand, it declined in finance and public administration by -0.9 percentage points (-13,000), public administration by -0.7% (-8,700), and agriculture by -2.0% (-5,000).

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Every month, Adecco Canada interprets the data from Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey. Here’s what happened in October:

Modest increase in employment in October

Employment grows by +15,000 jobs in October, following a steady growth over the year. However, the employment rate has been declining for six consecutive months, suggesting that while the total number of jobs has grown, this has not kept up with population growth in Canada.

Unemployment holds steady but is higher compared to October 2023

The unemployment rate remains at 6.5% in October 2024 but shows a 0.8 percentage points rise when compared on a year-over-year basis indicating that a higher proportion of people are looking for work despite the softening of the population growth over the last few months.

Employment increases in Alberta and New Brunswick

Alberta and New Brunswick showed employment gains by +0.5 and +0.8 percentage points respectively, while Prince Edward Island experienced a sharp decline of -1.2%, raising its unemployment rate to 10.0% in this province.

Business, building, and support services sector led employment increase

Employment rose mostly in business, building, and support services (+29,000 or +4.2%) in the month of October, followed by accommodation and food services (+12,000 or +1.1%) while finance, insurance, real estate, rental, and leasing fell by 13,000 (-0.9%) in the month but showed strong annual growth (+50,000 or +3.6%). Public administration employment also decreased by 8,700 (-0.7%) in October.

Declining participation rate

The labour force participation rate has been declining since May and reached a historical low of 64.8% in October, the lowest level since December 1997 excluding the COVID-19 pandemic years. Long-term downward trends reflect ageing demographics, despite recent high levels of core-aged participation.

The youth saw the largest annual drop (-2.1 percentage points), mainly from lower participation among students, and it declined as well for the core-aged workforce since recent highs in early 2024.

Boosting job satisfaction for retention

In October 2024, just over 6 out of 10 Canadian workers reported high job satisfaction. Satisfaction levels varied by age, with youth (55.3%) being the least satisfied and older workers (68.1%) the most.

Self-employed workers showed higher satisfaction (70.0%) compared to those in the public (60.2%) and private sectors (60.1%).

Among industries, agriculture workers reported the highest satisfaction (71.8%), while those in accommodation, food services (50.4%), and retail trade (53.9%) had lower satisfaction.

Don’t have time for a long reading? We’ve summarized the key takeaways from this month:

• Employment rose slightly in October, increasing by +0.1% (+15,000). However, the employment rate fell by 0.1 percentage points to 60.6%, marking the sixth consecutive month in decline.
• Unemployment remains the same at 6.5%.
• Employment increased the most in Alberta (+0.5%) and New Brunswick (+0.8%), while it fell by -1.2% in Prince Edward Island.
• Employment in males aged 15-24 increased by +1.8% (+25,000) while employment in women 55 and older declined by -0.8% (-15,000). Other age groups remained virtually unchanged.
• While business, building and other support services industry rose by +4.2% (+29,000) in October, the finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing sector fell by -0.9% (-13,000), and public administration also experienced a -0.7% (-8,700) decline.
• The total hours worked in October rose by +0.3% and got +1.6% higher when compared to 12 months earlier.
• There was a +4.9% (+$1.68) rise in average hourly wages versus October 2023 reaching $35.76/h.

References

Statistics Canada. (2022). Table 14-10-0287-01 Labour force characteristics, monthly, seasonally adjusted and trend-cycle, last 5 months [Data table]. https://doi.org/10.25318/1410028701-eng

Statistics Canada. (2022). Table 14-10-0355-01 Employment by industry, monthly, seasonally adjusted and unadjusted, and trend-cycle, last 5 months (x 1,000) [Data table]. https://doi.org/10.25318/1410035501-eng