Employment Change

Employment Change is the month-to-month change in seasonally adjusted employment (adjusted for regular seasonal patterns) from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). Statistics Canada (StatCan), the national statistical office, has published the monthly survey since 1945 for people aged 15 and older in the provinces. It excludes people on reserves, full-time military, institutional residents and territorial residents from national totals, with territories shown only as three-month averages. It counts employed persons by residence, so self-employed and farm workers count, while payroll jobs (positions on employer payrolls) are a different measure.

The reference week is normally the Sunday to Saturday week containing the 15th, except in December when it falls earlier before Christmas. Interviews run for 10 days after that week. Release follows in The Daily at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on the first or second Friday of the next month.

Each release adds unemployment, participation and employment rates, plus industry, wage and hour splits with charts and tables. Seasonally adjusted estimates for the prior three years are revised each year, with rebasing about every five years and a redesign about every ten years. Analysis focuses on differences significant at the 68% level.

The headline moves when these groups shift, often in offsetting directions.

• Full-time vs part-time: splits workers at 30 usual weekly hours and often shows which side drove the change.
• Class of worker: shows whether public employees, private employees or self-employed drove hiring.
• Industry: shows which goods or service sectors added or lost workers.
• Geography: shows which provinces drove the move, with cities shown as three-month averages.
• Demographics: shows gains or losses for men and women aged 15 to 24, 25 to 54 and 55 and older.
• Wages and hours: adds average hourly pay and actual hours to show tightness beyond headcount.

The January 2024 release, covering the reference week of January 14 to 20 and published February 9, 2024, showed employment up 37,000 (+0.2%) to 20,362,000. All of the gain came from part-time work (+49,000) while full-time barely changed. The employment rate (employed share of population 15 and older) still fell 0.1 points to 61.6% because population grew 126,000 (+0.4%), faster than jobs.

Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, Manitoba and Nova Scotia gained while Saskatchewan lost, as trade and finance rose and food services fell. The unemployment rate fell 0.1 points to 5.7% as the labour force (people working or seeking work) held steady. Public employees, total hours and average wages also rose, with wages up 5.3%.

1. Classify: Each person 15 and older is placed in one of three groups: employed (any paid work), unemployed or inactive. Unemployed means no work but seeking, on layoff or starting soon; inactive means outside the labour force.
2. Weight: Responses are weighted to the population, so each answer stands for many similar people, with fixes for non-response. For example, a 2% sample gives a weight of 50.
3. Adjust for seasons: Weighted totals are seasonally adjusted with X-12-ARIMA to remove regular calendar effects, and national employment sums six age and sex groups. Other series are then raked to that benchmark.
4. Employment change: Headline change equals the current adjusted level minus the prior level; percent change divides that gap by the prior level. For example, 20,362,000 minus 20,325,000 gives +37,000, or +0.2%.
5. Rates: The unemployment rate divides adjusted unemployed by adjusted labour force; employment and participation rates divide by population 15 and older. For example, 1,230,000 divided by 21,592,000 gives 5.7%, and 20,362,000 divided by 33,065,000 gives 61.6%.