Canadian Payroll Employment Slips in February

On Thursday, Statistics Canada (StatCan) reported that the number of employees receiving pay and benefits from their employer—measured as “payroll employment” in the Survey of Employment, Payrolls, and Hours—decreased 0.3% (49,000 employees) in February, following a 0.1% increase (14,400 positions) in January. Year-over-year, payroll employment was up 0.7% (124,300).

Monthly payroll employment declines were recorded in 9 of 20 sectors, including:

• Educational services, down 1.4% (21,300 positions)
• Accommodation and food services, down 1.0% (13,600 jobs)
• Retail trade, down 0.5% (10,600 positions)
• Manufacturing, down 0.4% (6,800 jobs)
• Public administration, down 0.4% (5,600 positions)

These declines were partially offset by gains in:

• Health care and social assistance, up 0.5% (12,600 jobs)
• Administrative and support, waste management, and remediation services, up a combined 0.5% (3,700 positions)

The remaining nine sectors saw little change.

Job Vacancies

There were 528,000 job vacancies in February, marking the sixth consecutive month of little change. Year-over-year, vacancies declined 19.9% (131,100).

The job vacancy rate—the number of vacant positions as a proportion of total labor demand—was 2.9% in February, unchanged from the previous month but down 0.8 percentage points from February 2024, when it was 3.7%.

There were 2.8 unemployed persons for every job vacancy in February, up from 2.0 a year earlier. The unemployment-to-job vacancy ratio has held steady at 2.8 since August 2024, except in November 2024 and January, when it rose slightly to 2.9.