Q3 2024 Canada Labour Market Brief: Slower Job Growth, Increasing Unemployment and Easing Inflation

Actalent's quarterly Labour Market and Economy Report connects important dots between data and trends across Canada’s engineering and sciences hiring landscape. Readers can expect to learn about job growth, wage growth, inflation, unemployment rates, labour force participation rates and other key factors that impact the attraction, hiring and retention of workers.

Executive Summary

Canada’s economy added 66,000 jobs in Q3 2024, falling behind the net 115,700 jobs added in the second quarter. September had stronger-than-anticipated jobs data, but overall trends still point to a weaker labour market: population growth continues to outpace employment growth, and the unemployment rate has increased every month in 2024 except January and September.

The unemployment rate increased from an average of 6.2% in Q2 to 6.5% in Q3 2024. The unemployment rate has grown by a full percentage point since Q3 2023.

Among the industries Actalent supports, Q3 2024 unemployment rates were as follows: healthcare (1.7%), utilities (1.9%), professional, scientific and technical services (3.3%), manufacturing (3.8%), and construction (6.2%).

Year-over-year inflation eased further in Q3, starting at 2.7% in June and ending at 1.6% in September. During the third quarter, inflation successfully met and fell below the Bank of Canada’s (BoC) target of 2.0%, which gave the BoC confidence to make two more interest rate cuts. The BoC has now made three consecutive rate cuts in 2024 and expectations for another rate cut are high.

The year-over-year average hourly wage rate for all employees increased 5.0% from Q3 2023 to Q3 2024, 0.1% below the annual wage growth observed in Q2. In terms of “real” earnings (adjusted for inflation), wages continue to outpace inflation.