Canadian Employment Holds Steady in August, but Unemployment Increases to 6.6%

On Friday, Statistics Canada (StatCan) reported that employment in August was little changed for the fourth consecutive month. Canada added 22,000 new positions, up 0.1%. The employment rate declined 0.1 percentage point to 60.8%.

Notable increases include the following:

• Educational services added 27,000 jobs, up 1.7%.
• Health care and social assistance grew by 25,000 positions, up 0.9%.
• Finance, insurance, real estate, rental, and leasing added 11,000 jobs, up 0.8%.

Those gains were offset by the following:

• Other services lost 9,000 jobs, down 2.3%.
• Professional, scientific, and technical services lost 16,000 positions, down 0.8%.
• Utilities shed 6,800 positions, down 4.5%.
• Natural resources lost 6,500 jobs, down 1.8%.

The unemployment rate rose 0.2 percentage points to 6.6% in August, after holding steady in July. This is the highest since May 2017, outside of 2020–21 pandemic period. The unemployment rate has generally trended up since April 2023, rising 1.5 percentage.

There were 1.5 million unemployed people in August, an increase of 60,000, or 4.3%, from July and an increase of 272,000, or 22.9%, from a year ago.