ICBA ECONOMICS OP/ED: Warning Signals all Over Canadian Economy

Unemployment growing

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate has been ticking higher. In July, Canada-wide unemployment stood at 6.9%, up from 5.7% 18 months ago. Job vacancy rates have also been falling.Young adults are bearing much of the burden of Canada’s slumping labour market.

Digging deeper into the data — and going back further to the pre-COVID years — yields insight into the dynamics of Canadian job creation. Looking at the period from January 2019 to July 2025 (roughly six-and-a-half years), we can track the trends in three broad employment categories: private-sector payroll jobs, public-sector jobs and the self-employed.

Since the start of 2019, public-sector jobs are up by almost one-quarter, while private-sector payroll positions have increased by 10%. Meanwhile, the number of self-employed Canadians declined over the same period, suggesting a deterioration of the climate for entrepreneurship in the country. That’s troubling.

Canada urgently needs more high-growth businesses. This means building a robust pipeline of new entrepreneurial ventures. Unfortunately, we have been falling short in this area, with the rate of business startups diminishing. It’s striking that Canada has around 100,000 fewer entrepreneurs than two decades ago, even though the population has increased dramatically over that time.