Labour Force Survey October 2025: For a change, some respite for the youth in October’s release

“The cumulative jobs gained (+127,000) in October and September has officially surpassed the cumulative jobs lost in July and August (-106,000). With majority of this gain shared between core-aged men and youth, youth unemployment rate declined by 0.6 percentage points from its all-time high 14.7% to 14.1%.

Though it is a little early to predict the Bank of Canada’s final move for 2025, however we expect, with newly lowered interest rate and steady inflation, the labour market to continue to maintain its resilience and support GDP growth for the next quarter.”

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Employment Levels: Building on the gains in September, October registered a jump in employment by 67,000 jobs. Though primarily driven by part-time employment, together with employment gains in September (+127,000), Canada’s labour market has recovered all the jobs lost in August and July (-106,000). Employment rate is up by 0.2 percentage points m/m to 60.8%.
• Unemployment and Participation Rates: Unemployment rate has declined by 0.2 percentage points m/m to 6.9% – though still up by 0.3 percentage point y/y. With lower immigration levels and declining population, the gain in participation rate is modest (+0.1 percentage points m/m).
• Demographics and Job Types: Employment gains in this release was concentrated around core-aged men (aged 25-54 year) and, to everyone’s surprise, among youth workers (aged 15 to 24 year). Overall core-aged workers gained 38,800 jobs, with men gaining (+33,300) more than women (+ 5,600). As mentioned earlier, October is the first month in 2025 where gain is recorded in youth employment (+21,000, +0.8percentage points m/m), bringing their unemployment down from 14.7% to 14.1% by -0.6 percentage points. However, among many positives, the only downside in October’s release is that employment gains have entirely accrued to part-time employment (+85,000, +2.3 percentage points m/m).
• Sectoral Breakdown: Employment gain is entirely led by service-producing industries, spearheaded by wholesale and retail trade (+41,000), followed by transportation (+30,000), information, culture and recreation (+25,000) and manufacturing (+9,000). Among the losing industries, the construction industry saw the largest decline by 15,000 jobs.
• Provincial Trends: Provincially, Ontario grabbed nearly 82 percent of the total employment gains recorded in October (+55,000), followed by Quebec (+12,000) and Alberta (+10,000), despite the STM and teachers strike in the later provinces, respectively.

TABLES