Unemployment Rate

The Unemployment Rate is Canada's official share of the labour force (employed plus unemployed) without work but available for work. It comes from the Labour Force Survey (LFS), a monthly household survey by Statistics Canada, the publisher, running since 1945. It covers civilians 15 and older, including permanent, non-permanent, and Canadian-born residents, but excludes reserves, full-time military, and institutions; national results use provinces only. The same survey also gives the participation rate (labour force divided by population) and the employment rate (employed divided by population).

Unpaid housework does not count as work, and discouraged seekers are not unemployed. The Canadian rate sits about one point above the United States measure on a comparable basis.

Labour-force status refers to the reference week (the Sunday-to-Saturday week containing the 15th); in December an earlier week applies. Interviews run over the 10 days after that week. Results appear in The Daily at 08:30 Eastern time, usually on the 1st or 2nd Friday after the reference month. Each release includes analysis, employment and participation rates, and industry breakdowns.

Each release also covers hourly wages with province, industry, and occupation detail, all seasonally adjusted unless stated. Seasonal factors revise yearly for three years, with rebasing to the latest census about every five years with new classifications.

The rate moves with changes in employment, search, and exits from the labour force.

• Employed: people who did paid work in the reference week or were absent with a job through illness, vacation, or family reasons.
• Unemployed: people without work who were available and searched in the past 4 weeks, were on temporary layoff, or start a job within 4 weeks.
• Not in the labour force: everyone else 15 and older, including discouraged seekers and full-time students.
• Flows into unemployment: job losers, job leavers, temporary layoffs, re-entrants, and new entrants to search.

The April 2020 shutdown (reference week April 12-18, 2020, released May 8, 2020) shows the search rule. The rate rose 5.2 points to 13.0% after 2.2 points in March, second only to 13.1% in December 1982 since 1976.

Employment fell by nearly 2 million in April, with 2.5 million working less than half their usual hours. About 5.5 million people were affected overall, over one-quarter of February employment. The publisher said the rate would be 17.8% including 1.1 million who wanted work but did not search.

1. Classify: interview each household member 15 and older and tag each as employed, unemployed, or not in the labour force (outside employed plus unemployed).
2. Weight: scale each answer by its selection chance, fix non-response and coverage gaps, then match monthly population totals. A 2% sample gives weight 50.
3. Aggregate: add weighted employed (E) and unemployed (U) into the labour force (LF = E + U).
4. Divide: compute UR = 100 × U divided by LF. For example, E = 20,000,000 and U = 1,500,000 give LF = 21,500,000 and UR ≈ 7.0%.
5. Adjust for seasons: remove seasonal effects with X-12-ARIMA, summing 6 age and sex groups for the headline, then raking details to it.