Canada’s labour market is ‘hanging in,’ not recovering, say economists - Human Resources Director

First monthly Labour Market Survey since latest tariffs shows 68,000 jobs lost; economists warn of weak dynamism and shrinking labour pool Canada’s labour market shed 68,000 jobs in September, pushing the national unemployment rate back to 6.5 per cent and erasing all net employment gains recorded so far this year, according to Statistics Canada’s latest Labour Force Survey (LFS). The losses – split almost evenly between full-time and part-time positions – follow a decline of 42,000 in August and mark the first full survey period to capture the weight of escalating United States-Canada tariffs. Canada has now shed a net 41,200 jobs in 2026, although employment was up by 95,000 jobs year over year. The employment rate fell 0.2 percentage points to 60.