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Economy

Manufacturing Is the Only Major Industry Smaller Than It Was in January 2019

Real GDP is up 14.6% since January 2019, but the industries behind that number aren't the ones you'd guess. Finance and professional services have each grown by nearly a third; health care by about a quarter. Manufacturing is the one broad industry that still hasn't gotten back to where it started.

Published 28 August 2026 · Open Data Canada Source Statistics Canada, table 36-10-0434-01
Line chart indexing real GDP for seven Canadian industries to January 2019 equals 100, monthly through June 2026. Six industries end above 100; manufacturing ends at 95, the only one still below its starting level.

Statistics Canada's June figures, released today, put real GDP growth at 0.3% for the month. That's the number likely to dominate coverage. But a longer view tells a more interesting story: since January 2019, Canada's economy has grown 14.6%, and that growth has been remarkably uneven across industries.

The answer is a wide spread. Professional, scientific and technical services and finance and insurance both grew about 30% over more than seven years, more than double the 14.6% economy-wide average. Information and cultural industries, oil and gas extraction, and health care and social assistance each grew close to a quarter. Arts, entertainment and recreation is up 20.9%, real estate 16.5%.

At the other end, three industries grew slower than the economy as a whole but still grew: accommodation and food services (11.0%), construction (10.3%), and agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting (8.9%). Manufacturing was the only broad industry on this list to shrink, down 5.4% from its January 2019 level.

Horizontal bar chart ranking Canadian industries by real GDP percent change from January 2019 to June 2026. Professional, scientific and technical services and finance and insurance lead at around plus 30%. Manufacturing is the only industry in negative territory, at minus 5.4%.

What the monthly numbers miss

None of this shows up in a single month's GDP release. May's report drew a contrast between goods-producing industries, up 0.6%, and services-producing industries, up 0.2%. In June that pattern flipped: goods-producing output was roughly flat while services-producing output rose 0.4%, two months that look contradictory in isolation. Measured from 2019, the picture is steadier: services-producing industries have grown 17.9% and goods-producing industries 7.0%, a gap that has been building for years, not one that shows up or disappears month to month.

Manufacturing's decline is worth separating from a pandemic-recovery story. Accommodation and food services and arts and entertainment were both hit hard in 2020, and both have since grown past their 2019 levels. Manufacturing hasn't.

Sources

  • Statistics Canada, table 36-10-0434-01 — Gross domestic product (GDP) at basic prices, by industry, monthly (real, chained 2017 dollars, seasonally adjusted at annual rates). Released 28 August 2026.

Methodology. Industry figures are percent change in real GDP from January 2019 to June 2026, pulled directly from the cube's monthly series for each 2-digit NAICS-based industry aggregate and for the all-industries total. The goods-producing and services-producing figures use the cube's own aggregate series for each group. The May and June month-over-month figures compare each month to the one before it in the same series. This ranking covers the industries with meaningful weight in the economy. One much smaller aggregate, management of companies and enterprises, fell even further over the same period (down more than 90%), but it accounts for roughly 0.02% of total GDP and its trajectory isn't comparable to a broad, dollar-heavy industry like manufacturing.