Category
Economy
GDP, inflation, jobs, trade. The big economic indicators, charted with the actual data and the methodology Statistics Canada uses.
For the full breakdown — core measures, provinces and categories — see the Canada inflation rate (CPI) tracker.
For tariffs and trade with the United States, see all our Canada-U.S. stories.
The economy in seven numbers
Live headline indicators, straight from Statistics Canada and the Bank of Canada.
Data as of 13 November 2026, updated after each Statistics Canada release or Bank of Canada rate decision. The source under each number links to its table or page.
Latest economy stories
11 billion dollars of rail upgrades could get Montreal to Toronto in 3 h 42, a farm-backed study says
A study released by Quebec's farm union says about 11 billion dollars of work on today's Québec City to Toronto line could cut Montreal to Toronto from the 5 h 18 in VIA's timetable to 3 h 42 on an express train. Alto's high-speed line promises 3 hours. The budget officer puts Alto's construction at 75 to 113 billion.
A 20-year job is getting rarer in Canada, even in the public sector
In 2001, about 1 in 8 employed Canadians aged 25 to 54 had spent 20 years or more with their current employer or in their current business. By 2025 it was about 1 in 14. Public sector employees are still twice as likely as private sector employees to have a job that long.
Young Canadians face more than twice the unemployment rate of older workers
Youth unemployment hit 13.7 percent in October. The bigger story is the gap. Young Canadians are jobless at 2.4 times the rate of workers aged 25 to 54, and Ontario's young workers are far behind Quebec's.
An estimated 1,700 families hold more wealth than the bottom 6.7 million
An estimated 1,700 Canadian families held 873 billion dollars in net worth in 2023. The bottom 40%, about 6.7 million families, held 542 billion combined.
Democrats won Congress. Trump's Canada tariffs won't automatically disappear.
The 50% U.S. tariff on a list of Canadian goods rests on a 1930 law that lets the president keep it, change it or end it. Congress can rewrite that law, but only with votes that can survive a veto.
It's getting harder to land your first coding job in Canada
Openings for coding jobs that ask for three years of experience or less are down 64 per cent since late 2022. Openings for more senior coding jobs fell 34 per cent. Hiring of young coders began falling before ChatGPT launched.
Which U.S. states sell the most to Canada
Texas sells the most to Canada, at 34.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2025. North Dakota depends on Canada most, which buys 81% of what it exports. Canada is the top foreign buyer for 27 of the 50 states.
Ottawa is buying into Cohere. Here's how its last two big stakes turned out.
The federal government will put up to 1.6 billion dollars of equity into Cohere, the Toronto AI company, in stages. The real test is whether that buys Canada lasting economic value, and getting the money back is only one measure. Ottawa's pandemic stake in Air Canada made money. The 2009 auto rescue did not.
The last pandemic mortgages are renewing at higher payments
About 12 per cent of outstanding Canadian mortgages are in the final wave of pandemic-era five-year fixed-payment loans renewing over the next 12 months. The Bank of Canada estimates their payments will rise by about 15 per cent on average, based on market rate expectations from May.
University grads still earn more in Canada, but trades are catching up
Canadians aged 25 to 34 with a bachelor's degree or higher earned 39.18 dollars an hour in 2025, more than any other education group. But their inflation-adjusted pay rose just 1.5 percent since 2009, while wages for trades certificate holders climbed 13.7 percent.
Why Young Canadians Still Think Inflation Is 8%
In the Bank of Canada's August survey, the median Canadian aged 18 to 24 put inflation over the past year at 7.85%. The official rate for August was 3.0%. Before 2020, younger and older respondents were about a point apart.
Four companies control two-thirds of Canada’s grocery market. In the US, the top four account for about a third.
Four companies sell about 67 cents of every dollar spent on groceries in Canada, by a USDA estimate of 2023 sales. In the United States the top four sell about 35 cents. Other estimates for the top four or five run as high as 80 percent.
Quebec lost 49,000 jobs in September. That is 72% of Canada's drop
Canada lost 68,000 jobs in September, the second monthly fall in a row. Quebec alone lost 49,000 of them. Outside Quebec, the country has still added jobs this year.
Canada's gasoline sales are back to 2019. Per person, they are down 10%.
Canadians bought 44.8 billion litres of gasoline in 2025, virtually the same as in 2019. The country has 4.0 million more people since then, so each of us bought 1,076 litres, down from 1,191. That is below every pre-pandemic year in the series, back to 1987.
Government Workers Went From 38% Working From Home to 20%
In May 2026, about 13% of Canada's broader public sector worked mostly from home, against 19% of other workers. Government alone was 20%, above the 17% average.
Pacific Link Pipeline: Route Map and Cost
Ottawa listed the Alberta-to-B.C. oil pipeline as a project of national interest on Oct. 1. Here is what the route, the cost estimates, the ownership plan and Trans Mountain's own record say about it.
Canada's economy was flat in July: construction rose, factories and stores fell
Real GDP was unchanged in July, as Statistics Canada's early estimate said. Construction and utilities grew. Manufacturing, retail and mining shrank. A first look at August points to +0.2%.
Canadians went back to the office. Working from home still more than doubled.
In May 2026, 17.0% of Canadian workers did most of their hours from home, up from 7.1% in 2016 and down from 37.8% in 2020. B.C. and Ontario lead. Saskatchewan is the only province lower than in 2016.
Young Canadians Are the Most Pessimistic About What AI Will Do to Jobs
69% of Canadians aged 18-34 expect AI to mean fewer jobs in Canada over the next 20 years — more than any older age group, and one of the larger such generational gaps Pew found anywhere in the world.
Canada's Job Market Is Changing Unevenly
Total job vacancies barely moved in the second quarter. But vacancies moved in different directions by education and occupation: down 5.8 percent for positions requiring a bachelor's degree, up 3.8 percent for positions requiring a trade certificate.
Canada's 3% inflation rate masks a much wider provincial split
From 2.41% in Ontario to 5.10% in Nova Scotia — Statistics Canada's August 2026 CPI release shows one of the widest provincial inflation gaps of the past year, and it traces back almost entirely to a single category: shelter.
Women in Public-Sector Industries Were 34% More Likely to Have a First Child
A new StatCan study links Canadian women's chances of having a first child to where they work. Women in public administration, education and health have pulled far ahead of women in administrative and service jobs since 2017. Union coverage matters too, but only modestly, and income still matters more than either.
Canada Looks Relatively Equal on Income. Then You Look at Wealth.
Canada's top 10% earn 33.5% of national income but hold 60.4% of wealth. The middle 40% owns just 25.7% of wealth, the lowest share of 15 high-income democracies compared here.
Foreign Control of Canada's Businesses Has Been Shrinking for 14 Straight Years — And More Than Half of What's Left Is American
In 2024, foreign investors legally controlled 13.9% of the assets held by businesses operating in Canada, the lowest figure Statistics Canada has recorded since the series began in 2010. Of that shrinking foreign share, the United States alone accounts for more than half.
Canada's Youth Unemployment Rate Is Now Above the US and OECD Average
For most of the past two decades, Canada's youth unemployment rate sat below the OECD average. Since late 2023 that has flipped. Canadian youth are now more likely to be unemployed than their peers in the United States or across the OECD as a whole, and Statistics Canada's own numbers confirm it.
Nearly Half of Businesses Selling Soon Say They Could Shrink or Close Without a Buyer
A brand-new Statistics Canada table shows 20.3 percent of private-sector businesses in Canada plan to sell or transfer ownership within 10 years, rising to 26.6 percent among businesses more than 20 years old. Among the smaller group planning to sell within 2 years, StatCan asked for the first time what happens if a buyer can't be found: 46.8 percent called closing or scaling down likely, and 46.5 percent called selling at a reduced price, or to a less-preferred buyer, likely too.
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.
Canada's mobile prices remain among the priciest in the G7 — and they're rising again.
Ottawa spent two years tracking wireless prices down and declared victory in January 2022. A federal price-comparison study shows Canada has stayed among the three most expensive places for a basic mobile plan among G7 countries plus Australia, at every plan size tracked, and by late 2025 the prices that did fall were climbing again.
Canada Produces More Oil Than Ever. The Jobs Haven't Come Back.
Crude oil production is up 34% since 2014 and sits at a record high. Oil and gas extraction employment is down 13.6% over the same span and has never recovered its 2014 peak. Pembina Institute flagged a version of this gap in 2025; this piece extends the comparison through 2025 with Statistics Canada and Alberta Energy Regulator data, plus a separate look at oil sands capital spending.
Foreigners bought 106B in Canadian bonds. Most wasn't new money.
Statistics Canada reported foreign investors bought a record 106 billion dollars of Canadian bonds in the second quarter of 2026, coverage that led with the headline number. Break the total down by transaction type and about 95 billion dollars was secondary-market trading of bonds that had already been issued — not new financing for Canadian borrowers.
Union Coverage Lowest in Alberta and Ontario, Highest Gains in P.E.I.
Alberta and Ontario have the lowest union coverage rates of any Canadian province in 2025, and both have bounced back from a low point since — Alberta's bounce three times as large as Ontario's. But being lowest today isn't the same as falling fastest: Prince Edward Island actually posted the largest gain of any province since 1997, while British Columbia, not Alberta or Ontario, saw the steepest decline of the full period.
Young Canadians Are More Likely to Think AI Data Centres Will Hurt the Economy
A Nanos poll finds a real generational split on whether AI data centres will hurt the economy, 38% of Canadians 18-34 versus 28% of those 55+. Opposition to government subsidies for building them is a separate story, high at every age, with no meaningful age gap at all.
Canada added 75,000 jobs in July. Government cut 27,000 of its own.
The headline jobs number is genuinely good: full-time and part-time gains were balanced, and unemployment matched a two-year low. But almost 60 percent of July's employment growth came from people going self-employed, private employers added 57,900 jobs, and the public sector cut 27,000 — the piece no outlet covering the release reported.
Vegetable oil is up 138% since 2020 — Canada grocery movers, June 2026
Vegetable oil has climbed 138% since January 2020, the steepest sustained increase among items StatCan tracks. Beef striploin is up 89.5% over that same stretch and 46% in the past year alone. Month to month, cantaloupe jumped 25.1% in June even as broccoli and tomatoes both got cheaper. The swings show how uneven grocery inflation remains from one item to the next.
43 of 44 Canadian Social Assistance Scenarios Fell Below the Poverty Line in 2025
Across every province, Maytree modelled 44 household scenarios against Canada's official poverty line in 2025. Forty-three came in below what the basics cost. The one exception, in Quebec, reaches just 3 percent of the province's social assistance caseload.
Every major Canadian airport lost U.S. flights in 2026
The drop in cross-border trips was mostly by car. In the air the U.S. pullback is milder, about 10% nationally, but it lands unevenly. Toronto and Vancouver carry the most U.S. exposure. Edmonton and Winnipeg fell the hardest.
Ontario EI rolls surged 24% since 2024, and factories are not the reason
In the two years since January 2024, Employment Insurance beneficiaries in Ontario grew by nearly 36,000 to 185,010, a 24% jump at nearly double the national rate. Manufacturing and utilities occupations, the ones cited most in tariff coverage, account for none of it.
Canada's best pension fund? We ranked all 8 — the benchmark winner isn't the famous one
After Ontario Teachers trailed its benchmark, we pulled the latest annual report of all eight of Canada's pension giants and built one standardized scorecard. Over a decade, only HOOPP clearly beats the benchmark it sets for itself — by 2 full percentage points a year. CPP and PSP earn the highest raw returns. And on the question that started this — private companies — almost no fund reliably beats its own private-equity benchmark once you stop looking at a single year.
Canada's road and water networks are aging back to 2005 levels
Canada's headline measure of infrastructure health has climbed for two decades. The data underneath tells a different story: the country's roads are back where they stood in 2005, and waterworks have fallen every year since 2014. The national average hides the decline of two networks people use daily.
Canadians are scared of AI. Their employers keep using more of it.
Two-thirds of Canadians want Ottawa to rein in artificial intelligence, even if it slows the technology down. Over the same stretch the share of businesses actually using AI has tripled, to about one in five. The fear and the reality have drifted apart, and the StatCan numbers on who is adopting, and why everyone else is not, tell a stranger story than the panic does.
CPP sold Nvidia all the way up — and it became its biggest stock anyway
Before the AI boom, the Canada Pension Plan held 120 million Nvidia shares. It spent five years selling three-quarters of them — through the launch of ChatGPT, through the greatest stock run of the decade — then bought back in near the top. The shares it sold would be worth more than fifteen billion dollars today.
Ontario Teachers got into SpaceX early. A plain index fund still beat them in 2025.
Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan bought into SpaceX in 2019, and the stake could be worth as much as 11.6 billion U.S. dollars if the company lists at its targeted valuation. Yet in 2025 the fund returned 6.7 percent — below its own 11.7 percent benchmark and less than half the S&P 500's 17.9 percent. Its private equity lost money for the first time in 16 years. A look at what the windfall hides, and how Canada's pension giants are quietly changing what they invest in.
Canada has an "entrepreneurial drought," small-business group tells MPs
Appearing before the House Finance Committee on the spring economic update, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business said more businesses are closing than opening across several sectors, for as long as 12 straight quarters. It warned that 55 percent of current owners would not recommend starting a business today, and pressed for a lower tax rate and a deduction threshold that has not moved since 2009.
Canada was the world's 4th-largest carmaker in 2000. It now ranks 14th.
In 2000 Canada built 2.96 million vehicles and sat fourth in the world. In 2025 it built 1.24 million and slipped to 14th, behind the Czech Republic and Turkey. Mexico now builds 3.3 times as many vehicles as Canada does.
Canada has lost 111,000 full-time jobs since January. Quebec is taking the worst of it.
April was the fourth straight monthly decline in full-time employment. Unemployment hit a six-month high. Wages still grew 4.5 percent year-over-year. The headline number of minus 18,000 hides what is happening underneath it.
Canada's EV market didn't slow — it was switched off
Honda is shelving its largest-ever North American EV investment, citing 'sluggish U.S. demand.' The Canadian story is sharper — ZEV market share fell from 18% to 9% in one quarter when both major rebates ended within weeks of each other.
Canadian trips to the U.S. are rising again, but remain 23% below August 2024
Canadians made 3.2 million return trips from the U.S. in August 2026, up 9% from a year earlier. Trips have now topped the same month a year before for five months in a row. That is still 23% below August 2024.