Canada’s unemployment picture

Statistics Canada's most recent Labour Force Survey painted a positive picture for Canadians' job prospects, as the country seems to be emerging from the pandemic, despite fears of a sixth wave. The unemployment rate is falling, and sectors such as services, retail trade and health care are picking up after two years of near dormancy. Federal wage subsidy support helped keep thousands of businesses afloat for the past two years, which may help explain why insolvencies among corporations and small businesses continue to decrease.

The story map below — updated to include StatCan's May 6 release — helps break down what's happening. First, there's an interactive dashboard tracking unemployment across the country, displaying the unemployment rate and job numbers by province (the territories are not part of this dataset) for March, the most recent month available. You can click the subsequent tabs for other visual stories, ending with a breakdown of growth by sector from Jan. 1, 2018 to Apr, 2022.

(For the interactive dashboards on the first two tabs, click a province to see the corresponding values in the tables below. Click outside the map to return to the original view. For the last three tabs, you can make a selection from the menu on the right. The default value for age is 15 years and over.)