A little-noticed line in Statistics Canada’s latest unemployment report points to a potentially big problem on the horizon. Over the past few months, Statistics Canada has been documenting how job growth has failed to keep pace with population growth, which is entirely driven by immigration.
“Since January 2023, employment growth has averaged 28,000 per month, while growth in the population aged 15 and over in the LFS has averaged 81,000 per month,” says the report on the latest unemployment figures.
This growth of 81,000 per month only covers people aged 15 and over, so the monthly population growth is much higher. According to Statistics Canada, we need to create 50,000 jobs a month to keep the unemployment rate stable.
We’ve only hit that mark in January, May and June this year, with the other months falling short. In October, with only 18,000 jobs created but 85,000 people entering the labour force, the unemployment rate rose from 5.5% to 5.7%.
