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Canadian Economy

Canada unemployment rises to 6.7% as October employment changes little

2026-11-15

Desks and storage units in an empty office

Canada's unemployment rate rose to 6.7 percent in October while employment was little changed, showing a labour market in which finding work remains difficult even without a large monthly drop in total jobs. Statistics Canada's November 6 release estimated employment fell by 4,700, a change rounded to 0.0 percent. The employment rate, the share of people aged 15 and over who have work, slipped 0.1 percentage points to 60.5 percent.

The unemployment rate increased by 0.2 percentage points as the number of people looking for work rose by 33,000. It was still 0.2 percentage points below October 2025 and below the 6.9 percent recent peak reached in April 2026. Employment had fallen by 68,000 in September and 42,000 in August, so October's small net change did not reverse those earlier losses. Over the year, employment was almost unchanged, up 17,000 or 0.1 percent.

Private-sector weakness is masked by public-sector gains

Private-sector employment fell by 53,000 in October, while public-sector employment rose by 50,000 after four monthly declines. Self-employment changed little. Wholesale and retail trade lost 29,000 jobs, while construction added 16,000 and educational services added 15,000. Alberta's employment fell by 24,000, whereas British Columbia gained 12,000. These offsets explain why a near-flat national total can coexist with marked changes in the kind and location of work available.

Young people faced a sharper deterioration: unemployment among 15-to-24-year-olds rose 0.7 percentage points to 13.7 percent. Among all unemployed people, 23.7 percent had been searching continuously for at least 27 weeks, up from 21.5 percent a year earlier. Only 18.9 percent of people unemployed in September had found work by October, below the 24.6 percent average for the same months in 2017-2019. The job-finding comparison is not seasonally adjusted.

Wage gains and household pressure need separate measures

Average hourly wages among employees were C$37.89, up 2.2 percent over the year in unadjusted data. A supplementary measure found 29.7 percent of people aged 15 and older lived in households that had struggled to meet essential financial needs in the previous four weeks, up two percentage points from a year earlier. That is a reported financial-difficulty measure, not an official poverty rate. The employment survey describes the reference week of October 11-17, rather than conditions on publication day, and its estimates remain subject to survey uncertainty.

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