Jobs

Unemployment and employment, month by month, by age, and by city, with Canada beside 16 OECD peers

How the job market is doing: the unemployment rate month by month with Canada beside its OECD peers, the monthly change in employment, unemployment by age and by city, and the employment rate. Growth and productivity are on the Growth & Productivity page.

Where Canada stands

A scorecard of where Canada ranks among the peer group’s 17 economies on each measure (latest available year). Dots are ordered by rank, so further right is more favourable for Canada (lower-is-better measures like unemployment are flipped accordingly). Canada is maroon, key comparators in colour; hover a dot for its value and rank.

Unemployment rate

The share of the labour force that is out of work and looking for work, month by month. Canada’s line comes from Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey and is current to the latest monthly release. The other countries’ lines are OECD harmonized rates, which are published about five weeks later, so they end a month or two earlier. Switzerland and New Zealand publish quarterly rates only and are not shown. All series are seasonally adjusted. The chart opens on the last three years; drag the slider for the full record.

Latest month: ranked

Every country’s rate for July 2026, the most recent month reported by at least ten of them (14 here). Countries whose latest figure is older than that month are left out of this view. The United Kingdom’s rolling three-month rate is published later than the others, so it is usually one of them.

Monthly change in employment

The month-over-month change in the number of people employed, in thousands, seasonally adjusted. The Labour Force Survey is a sample survey, so a single month’s change of a few tens of thousands can fall within its sampling variability. Statistics Canada reports the significance threshold with each release. The run of months is more telling than any one bar. The chart opens on the last five years; drag the slider back to 1976.

Unemployment rate by age

Annual harmonized unemployment rates by age bracket, for Canada and 16 OECD peers. Use the dropdown to switch age bracket: youth (15–24) unemployment runs far above the prime-age rate, and the peer ranking shifts with it.

Latest unemployment rate by age: ranked

Unemployment by city

The national rate hides large regional differences. This map shows the current unemployment rate in each of Canada’s largest metropolitan areas — zoom and pan to your area. From the monthly Labour Force Survey (three-month moving average, seasonally adjusted), so it stays current with the national series above; it covers the ~40 largest CMAs. (Smaller centres aren’t separately estimated by the LFS.)

Employment rate

The share of an age group that is employed. It complements the unemployment rate by capturing people who are neither working nor counted as unemployed — for instance those who have stopped looking for work. Use the dropdown to switch age bracket.

Latest employment rate: ranked

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