Canada's Employment Surprisingly Falls for Second Straight Month as Youth, Women Drive September Decline

MT newswire2026/10/09 13:03

09:03 AM EDT, 10/09/2026 (MT Newswires) -- Canada lost 68,000 jobs in September, a 0.3% monthly decline, following a further drop of 42,000 in August, while the unemployment rate rose 0.1 percentage point to 6.5%, according to the country's statistical agency on Friday. The jobs drop was unexpected, as a Bloomberg survey saw a 10,000 consensus gain in September, while the rise in the unemployment rate to 6.5% was in line with expectations. The decline was driven by a 48,000 drop in employment among young people aged 15 to 24, down 1.8% monthly, and a 28,000 decrease among women aged 25 to 54, down 0.4%, wrote Statistics Canada in its Labour Force Survey (LFS) release. Both full-time and part-time jobs fell, by 35,000 and 33,000, respectively. Employment losses were led by educational services, which shed 35,000 jobs, followed by health care and social assistance (-23,000) and manufacturing (-13,000), added StatsCan. Other services, including repair, maintenance and personal and household services, added 17,000 jobs, partly offsetting the declines. Average hourly wages increased 2.3% year over year to CA$37.64 in September, up from 2.0% growth in August, according to unadjusted data. The labor force participation rate declined 0.2 percentage point to 64.8%, its lowest level since December 1997 outside the pandemic period in 2020, indicating that a smaller share of Canadians aged 15 and older were working or actively looking for a job, said the Ottawa-based agency. The monthly LFS estimates are based on a sample and are as such subject to sampling variability. As a result, monthly estimates will show more variability than trends observed over longer time periods. This analysis focuses on differences between estimates that are statistically significant at the 68% confidence level. LFS estimates at the Canada level don't include the territories. The LFS estimates are the first in a series of labor market indicators released by StatsCan, which includes indicators from programs such as the Survey of Employment, Payroll

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