Canada’s Unemployment Rate Rises to 6.7% as Hiring, Not Firing, Freezes
Statistics Canada and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics published October employment data at 08:30 ET on Friday, November 6, and the two reports said different things. Canada’s unemployment rate rose two tenths of a point to 6.7% while employment fell 4,700 (0.0%), a move Statistics Canada itself calls little changed. American nonfarm payrolls rose 165,000 and the US rate was 4.1%.
A Reuters poll of economists had looked for about 13,600 jobs added in Canada and the rate holding at 6.5%. FactSet and Bloomberg surveys put the US median near 65,000 payrolls with the rate holding at 4.2%. Canada missed on both counts; the United States beat on both.
The more useful Canadian finding is the shape of the weakness, which Statistics Canada’s October Labour Force Survey spells out. Canadians are not being hired. They are also not being laid off in unusual numbers, though that half of it rests on thinner evidence: the release benchmarks the hiring side against 2017 to 2019 and gives the layoff rate only a year-ago comparison, 0.7% against 0.6%.
The rate rose in the month and is still below where it was a year ago
The October estimates describe “the reference week of October 11 to 17, 2026”. In it, employment fell 4,700 (0.0%), which StatCan calls little changed and which “follows declines in September (-68,000; -0.3%) and August (-42,000; -0.2%)”. The employment rate fell a tenth to 60.5%, “marking a third consecutive monthly decline”, and across twelve months employment shows “little net variation (+17,000; +0.1%)”.
The rise to 6.7% is the second monthly increase in a row, and two facts from the same release belong beside it. The October rate “was down 0.2 percentage points year over year and remained below the recent peak of 6.9% recorded in April 2026”. And it rose “as more people searched for work (+33,000; +2.2%)”. More people looking is what pushed the rate up, not a wave of job losses.
Monthly change in Canadian employment, January to October 2026. Source: Statistics Canada table 14-10-0287 via the StatCan Web Data Service.
Canadians are not being laid off, they are not being hired
Three figures carry the finding. Statistics Canada notes that “estimates presented in this release are seasonally adjusted” unless otherwise stated, and the two flow rates below both carry that label; the duration figures do not, so they are seasonally adjusted.
| Measure | October 2026 | A year earlier | 2017 to 2019 reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Share of September’s unemployed with work in October (not seasonally adjusted) | 18.9% | 19.8% | 24.6% |
| Unemployed searching 27 weeks or more | 23.7% | 21.5% | 17.2% |
Source: Statistics Canada, Labour Force Survey, October 2026. The two references sit on different bases: the same months of 2017 to 2019 for job-finding, the whole of 2017 to 2019 for long-term unemployment.
The third is the layoff rate, 0.7% in October against 0.6% a year earlier, also not seasonally adjusted, which StatCan calls “virtually unchanged”. Together the three say what has gone wrong: Canadians are losing jobs at close to last year’s rate, the exit from unemployment has narrowed, and the queue behind it has lengthened. StatCan’s “just under one in five” is a level, not a line being crossed. It was 19.8% a year ago, already under one in five, and the distance that matters is the one to 24.6%.
That leaves a tension, because the same release reports private sector employees falling 53,000 in October. Statistics Canada does not attribute the decline, and two mechanisms fit a shrinking payroll: people being let go, or people leaving and not being replaced. On our reading of the two rates, the first is not the main story, because the layoff rate is where it was a year ago, and the second is what a job-finding rate of 18.9% describes. A payroll can shrink quietly.
The duration figures are where the cost sits. Of the 1.5 million Canadians unemployed in October, 23.7% had been searching for 27 weeks or more, which is about 350,000 people, our arithmetic on StatCan’s rounded total. Among those 55 and older it is 32.7%, up from 27.9% a year earlier. It is not confined to them: among core-aged unemployed people the share was 25.3%, up from 23.3%, so the lengthening is not confined to workers near the end of their careers.
October’s public sector gain follows four months of declines
The month’s two largest sector moves pulled against each other. Private sector employees fell 53,000 (-0.4%), “the first decline since February”. Public sector employees rose 50,000 (+1.1%), “following four consecutive monthly declines totalling 148,000 (-3.2%)”.
Read alone, that looks like government hiring absorbing private weakness. The twelve-month figures in the same paragraph of the same release say otherwise. Over the year the public sector is down 70,000 (-1.5%) and the private sector is up 35,000 (+0.3%). October’s public sector gain recovers part of what the sector shed over the previous four months, and the sector is still smaller than it was a year ago.
That paragraph ends on a third class of worker. “Self-employment was little changed in October and was up by 52,000 (+1.9%) compared with 12 months earlier”, against the 0.3% growth in private sector employees over the same twelve months. On our reading that is the freeze from another angle: over a year in which the route onto a private payroll narrowed, working for yourself grew faster than working for someone else.
Monthly change in public and private sector employees across the thirteen months from October 2025 to October 2026. Source: Statistics Canada, Labour Force Survey. The monthly changes are our arithmetic on StatCan’s published levels.
Wholesale and retail trade is down 113,000 over twelve months
Wholesale and retail trade lost 29,000 jobs (-1.0%) in October and “has trended down in the 12 months to October (-113,000; -3.7%)”, with the year-over-year declines “concentrated in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia”. Trended is StatCan’s own word for the longer stretch.
Two industries added jobs in the month, and the twelve-month check separates them. Construction “increased by 16,000 (+0.9%) in October, following two consecutive months of little change”, and over the year it is up 47,000 (+2.9%). Educational services rose 15,000 (+1.0%), “partially offsetting the decline in September (-35,000; -2.2%)”, but over the year it is down 48,000 (-3.0%). One of those gains holds up on the year. The other is a partial recovery inside a decline.
By age, October’s movement sat at the edges. The youth unemployment rate rose 0.7 points to 13.7% “as employment edged down and more youth searched for work” and the rate for those 55 and older rose 0.2 points to 5.5%, while core-aged rates were unchanged for men (5.8%) and women (5.3%) with employment “held steady”. The duration figures above are the reminder that an unchanged rate is not an unchanged experience.
Quebec’s rate fell for the opposite reason to Ontario’s
Alberta’s 24,000 jobs lost (-0.9%) is the month’s largest provincial decline in absolute terms, on our comparison of the provincial figures in that release, and the province’s unemployment rate rose 0.9 points to 7.3%. StatCan prints the reversal beside it: the October fall was “offsetting a similar-sized increase in September (+23,000; +0.9%)”. Alberta’s rate is little changed year over year and its employment is up 41,000 (+1.6%) over twelve months, so two months that cancel each other out are not a trend. Prince Edward Island’s 1,300 jobs lost is the larger percentage decline, at -1.3%. Employment rose in “British Columbia (+12,000; +0.4%) and Newfoundland and Labrador (+2,900; +1.2%)”, and StatCan headed the section “Employment falls in Alberta, increases in British Columbia”.
The two biggest provinces show the same mechanism running both ways. In Ontario, “employment was little changed for a third consecutive month” and the unemployment rate rose 0.3 points to 7.3% “as more people searched for work”, which is the national story in one province; over the year Ontario employment was little changed and its rate is down 0.3 points. In Quebec, employment “held steady” after “a cumulative decline of 68,000 (-1.5%) in August and September”, and the rate fell 0.3 points to 5.7% “as fewer people searched for work”. That is not a bright spot. Quebec employment is down 106,000 (-2.3%) over twelve months and its unemployment rate is up 0.4 points from a year earlier despite October’s fall. A rate can improve because the job market did, or because people stopped looking. In Quebec in October it was the second.
Wages grew 2.2% while inflation has run around 3% since April
Average hourly wages among employees rose 2.2% over the year, up $0.83 to $37.89, after 2.3% growth in September. Statistics Canada labels that series not seasonally adjusted, and so do we.
Set it against the Bank of Canada’s own October language: CPI inflation “has been around 3% since April and is expected to rise to about 3½% by the end of the year”. On the realized figure, Canadian pay is rising more slowly than prices have been rising. On the Bank’s own expectation, the gap is wider again by the end of the year.
The share of households struggling to meet their needs rose for the first time since 2022
Statistics Canada reports household financial security in this release as an indicator of Quality of Life. In October 2026, 29.7% of Canadians aged 15 and older lived in a household that had found it difficult to meet its financial needs for “transportation, housing, food, clothing and other necessary expenses over the previous four weeks”. After a downward trend “from October 2022 (35.5%) to October 2025 (27.7%)”, the share “rose 2.0 percentage points in the 12 months ending in October 2026”.
Among the 15 largest census metropolitan areas it “continued to be highest in CMAs in Southern Ontario, led by Oshawa (38.4%), Windsor (36.9%) and Hamilton (35.9%)”, and StatCan notes that all three had unemployment rates above the national average in October. The lowest was Quebec City, which the release writes as “the CMA of Québec”, at 15.7%. That is the city, not the province whose unemployment rate appears above.
“Close to half (47.2%) of core-aged persons living in single parent households had experienced difficulties meeting their financial needs in the previous four weeks”, against 33.0% for couples with children and 27.3% for couples without. Over twelve months the share “varied little among single parent households and couples with children, while it increased among couples without children (+2.0 percentage points)”.
The release pairs that with a second Quality of Life reading, job satisfaction. Just over six in ten workers aged 15 to 69 (60.9%) rated theirs 8, 9 or 10 out of 10, a proportion that “has been stable in recent years but remains slightly lower than in 2023 (62.2%), when labour market conditions were generally more favourable”. The lowest share was in sales and service occupations, 54.3%, which is also the broad occupational group with “the lowest average hourly wage ($24.19) of any broad occupational group”, a cut by occupation rather than by the industry lines used above.
In the United States, payrolls rose 165,000 and two prior months were revised up
Nonfarm payrolls rose 165,000 in October, to 159,293 thousand from 159,128 thousand in September, and the unemployment rate was 4.1%, which the US Employment Situation report calls little changed and says “has remained in a narrow range of 4.1 percent to 4.3 percent since March”. September’s reading was 4.2%, and the labor force participation rate was 61.9%, also described as little changed.
Three industries carry most of the month. Professional and business services added 70,000, health care 42,000 and transportation and warehousing 25,000, which is 137,000 of the 165,000 on our arithmetic, and the release identifies no industry with a significant loss.
The revisions do more to the picture than the headline. August payroll growth was revised from 133,000 to 186,000 and September from 29,000 to 60,000, which on our arithmetic is 84,000 more jobs across those two months than had previously been reported. A September print of 29,000 read as a stall. At 60,000 it does not.
Average hourly earnings for all private nonfarm employees were $38.00, up 14 cents or 0.4% in the month and 3.1% over twelve months. That is a near cousin of the Canadian 2.2% rather than the same series: Canada’s covers employees and is not seasonally adjusted, the US figure covers all private nonfarm employees, and the comparison only means anything with both labels attached.
Canadian and US unemployment rates since January 2022. Sources: Statistics Canada and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Canada counts from age 15 and the United States from age 16. The gap figures are our arithmetic.
The gap between the two rates is 2.6 percentage points, our subtraction on the two agencies’ October figures, and they are near neighbours rather than one measure: Canada counts from age 15 and the United States from age 16. In July 2022 Canada bottomed at 4.8% against a US rate of 3.5%, a gap of 1.3 points and the narrowest in the January 2022 to October 2026 span the chart draws. The direction since is wider, though not in a straight line: Canada was at 6.9% in April 2026 and 6.4% in both July and August before October’s 6.7%.
The Bank of Canada raised rates in October and left the door open
On October 28 the Bank of Canada raised its target for the overnight rate by 25 basis points to 2.50%. Four lines from the Bank’s October announcement are the ones Friday’s release speaks to.
On the labour market: “The unemployment rate has been around 6½% for several months.” It is 6.7% now, the employment rate has fallen three months running, and the private sector shed jobs in October.
On slack: “A broad set of indicators continue to point to some excess supply in the economy.”
On inflation: “inflation is higher and more persistent than in the July Report”.
And on what follows: “There could be a need to increase the policy rate further.”
Those sentences do not point the same way, and October’s data did not resolve them. A labour market where just under one in five of the unemployed found work within the month, against close to one in four before the pandemic, argues one thing. Inflation that has run around 3% since April, which the Bank expects to reach about 3½% by the end of the year, argues another. The next scheduled decision is December 9.
What this report bears on
A policy rate the Bank has said may need to rise further, set against an employment rate down three months running, bears on three things at once: the rate itself, the Canadian household, and what a Canadian portfolio holds.
On the rate, one-month CORRA futures on the Montreal Exchange priced about 43% of a quarter-point increase into the December decision, 10.78 basis points of a 25 basis point move, implying a target of 2.61%. Montreal Exchange quotes are settlement prices from the previous session, so that figure is what the market carried into Friday morning. Our November 4 piece on why the Bank of Canada December rate hike is priced as a coin flip sets out how an implied policy rate is solved out of a futures price. Two more Statistics Canada readings land before the Bank decides: the October Consumer Price Index on November 16 and the November Labour Force Survey on December 4.
On the household and on the portfolio, the mechanism is the same one. Wholesale and retail trade employment is down 113,000 over twelve months, concentrated in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia, and 29.7% of Canadians aged 15 and older are in a household that found it difficult to cover necessities in the previous four weeks, a share up over the year for the first time since 2022. Pay growing 2.2% while prices have run around 3% since April is the squeeze we read into both, and the reading is ours: the release attributes neither figure to anything. Household income is also what a mortgage and a credit card balance get serviced out of, which makes this a question to carry into the next set of results from the lenders, and that is the ground our page on Canadian bank stocks covers. October’s report settles neither question. It describes the conditions both are being asked under.
What the release does settle is the character of the weakness. StatCan’s word for October is “little changed”, and on the headline that holds: employment fell 4,700 on the month, and the rate is lower than a year ago and still below “the recent peak of 6.9% recorded in April 2026”. The pressure is in the flow rather than the level: a frozen labour market rather than a collapsing one, which changes what the headline rate tells you. On the evidence this release publishes, it is not saying Canadians are losing jobs at an unusual rate. It is saying how long it now takes to find one.
Data as of November 6, 2026. Canadian figures, including the household financial difficulty and job satisfaction figures from the release’s own spotlight sections: Statistics Canada, Labour Force Survey, October 2026, released November 6 at 08:30 ET. US figures: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Employment Situation, October 2026. Policy rate and quotations: Bank of Canada, October 28, 2026. December pricing: Montreal Exchange one-month CORRA futures, previous session settlement. Upcoming release dates: Statistics Canada key indicators schedule.
Disclaimer: The content on bestcanadianstocks.ca is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions. Canadian figures are from Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey for October 2026, published in The Daily on November 6, 2026 at 08:30 ET, including the household financial difficulty figures, which come from that release’s own spotlight section, and the Quebec and Ontario figures, which are taken from the release narrative rather than its rounded indicator panel. Statistics Canada seasonally adjusts the estimates in this release unless it says otherwise; the job-finding rate, the layoff rate and the wage figure are the exceptions it labels, and the piece labels them too. United States figures are from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Employment Situation for October 2026, released the same morning at 08:30 ET, with every figure confirmed a second time against the BLS public API (series CES0000000001, LNS14000000 and CES0500000003). The policy rate and the quoted sentences are from the Bank of Canada’s interest rate announcement of October 28, 2026, confirmed against the Bank’s Valet series V39079. December pricing is derived from one-month CORRA futures on the Montreal Exchange against spot CORRA from the Bank of Canada, and Montreal Exchange quotes are settlement prices from the previous session, so it is what the market carried into Friday morning rather than a reaction to the data. Consensus expectations are attributed in plain text: Canada from a Reuters poll of economists, the United States from FactSet and Bloomberg surveys. The two-country unemployment gap, the revision total, the Alberta comparison and the reading of why a private sector payroll can shrink are our arithmetic or our reading of those published figures and are labelled as ours in the body.
