Statistics Canada: Less Than Half of All Canadians Aged 25-54 Now Have Full-Time, Year-Round Jobs

Statistics Canada: Less Than Half of All Canadians Aged 25-54 Now Have Full-Time, Year-Round Jobs

New census data from Statistics Canada suggests the quality of Canadian jobs continues to fall while precarious work continues to rise.

Most disturbingly, StatCan reports less than half of all Canadian workers (49.8%) between the ages of 25 and 54 worked full-time, full-year jobs in 2015.

According to StatCan, “the period from 2005 to 2015 saw an overall shift from full-time, full-year employment to part-time or part-year work,” something they attribute to “social and economic changes, such as the 2008-2009 financial crisis,” as well as “a shift from traditional to more flexible work schedules.”

Broken down overall by gender, 56.2% of men and 43.7% of women currently work full-time, full-year jobs, while 33.8% of men and 38.7% of women work jobs part-time and/or part-year.

Notably, core-aged men have seen a 7.1% drop in full-time, full-year jobs compared to 2.7% of women, producing the lowest numbers StatCan has on record:

“Fewer core-aged men (those aged 25 to 54) are working full-time all year. In 2015, 56.2% of men aged 25 to 54 worked full-time all year, down from 63.3% a decade earlier, and the lowest proportion since 1980 – the first reference year for which comparable statistics were collected.”

Meanwhile, over the same time period, StatCan notes “employment growth was strongest in service-producing industries,” growing by 12% at the same time as Canada saw 387,320 jobs in manufacturing disappear – one-fifth of Canada’s entire manufacturing workforce.

Retail salesperson continued to be the most common occupation in Canada, a broad category that includes “food service counter attendants, service station attendants and grocery clerks.” StatCan notes these jobs are mostly “part-time” and, in 2016, the median age of Canadian retail workers were 36.7 years old.

StatCan also notes roughly one in five seniors over the age of 65 reported working in 2015, more than double the number that worked in 1995.

The agency also notes the number of seniors working full-time jobs is now at the highest rates since StatCan began collecting data in 1981.