Around 14 per cent of Canadian residents work in health care and social assistance, up from 8 per cent in the 1970s.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
During a challenging stretch for the Canadian economy, the labour market has been relying on one industry for the bulk of its job creation: health care.
Since the end of 2023, employment in health care and social assistance has risen by 6.4 per cent, or around 150,000 positions, according to payroll data from Statistics Canada. That is nearly double the expansion in all other industries, which have a net gain of roughly 86,000 positions combined over the same span.
The trend is largely similar in the United States, where hiring in health care has propped up otherwise sluggish job numbers.
There’s much to explain Canada’s stagnant labour market of late.
Tariffs imposed by the United States have walloped key export sectors in Canada and put a chill on hiring plans. Even before the trade war, job vacancies were vanishing as the Bank of Canada used higher interest rates to slow the economy and douse inflation. And the size of the population is now in decline, owing to stricter immigration policies that have cooled growth in labour supply.
In a choppy economic environment, health care is something of an outlier and less exposed to the ebbs and flows of the business cycle. And like other Western countries, Canada is getting older: Roughly one-fifth of the population is 65 and older, compared with just 8 per cent in the early 1970s.
But its recent job boom isn’t solely a story of aging demographics: Policy decisions on improving access to child care and shifting consumer spending patterns have played a key role, too.
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“Health care and social assistance are the care economy. They’re clearly influenced by different trends than the general cyclicality of the economy,” said Brendon Bernard, senior economist at hiring site Indeed Canada.
“This sector really, really stands above others as an area that is adding a lot of jobs, when a lot of the rest of the economy has cooled off,” he added.
Over decades, health care has become a bigger chunk of the labour market. Around 14 per cent of Canadian residents work in health care and social assistance, up from 8 per cent in the 1970s.
Of late, the hiring binge is spread across virtually all facets of the health care system, including the offices of physicians and dentists, out-patient care centres and home health services. General medical and surgical hospitals have added nearly 54,000 positions (an increase of 8.6 per cent) since the end of 2023, while nursing care facilities have added more than 10,000 employees.
In broad industry data, Statscan lumps health care and social assistance together – and the latter group is a standout for job creation, too.
Employment in community food, housing and emergency services has risen by 18.5 per cent (or around 4,600 positions) since the end of 2023. Meantime, jobs at child-care services have surged by 37 per cent – or more than 55,000 roles – over the past four years, owing to the federal government’s plan to create more affordable and accessible spaces for child care.
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A January report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a left-leaning think tank, found that targets for the creation of new child-care spaces aren’t being met, which suggests there’s room for expansion and further job gains.
“We’re still, I think, in early days of this industry sort of coming to maturity,” Mr. Bernard said of child care. “There’s clearly going to be demand to scale up further.”
The U.S. finds itself on a similar path. Over the past year, employment in health care has risen by 2 per cent, whereas all other industries have a loss of 0.1 per cent combined.
“The entirety of job growth is happening in one sector. That’s concerning,” said Carrie Freestone, senior U.S. economist at Royal Bank of Canada.
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Several trade-exposed industries in the U.S. have been struggling. The manufacturing sector has shed 100,000 jobs over the past year, while transportation and warehousing has lost another 167,000 positions, in seasonally unadjusted terms. Canada is likewise losing jobs in industries targeted by U.S. tariffs, including autos, manufacturing and metals.
“It could be that firms are facing uncertainty paralysis and aren’t hiring right now‚ because they’re worried about tariffs and what’s going to happen," Ms. Freestone said of U.S. companies.
To some degree, the health boom is also a reflection of consumer preferences. In 2023, the average household in Canada spent $1,038 on personal care services, which range from hair care to massage therapy and weight-loss treatments. These expenditures have more than tripled since 2010. Spending on eye and dental care is also on the rise.
As of January, there were roughly 220,000 positions at health and personal care retailers (everything from pharmacies to health-food stores), a figure that has risen 5.3 per cent since the end of 2019. This is a rare growth area in the retail landscape: At all other retailers combined, jobs have dropped by 40,000 or 2.2 per cent.
Mr. Bernard said it’s likely that health care will become an even bigger chunk of the work force, given the country’s demographic trajectory: Under a medium-growth scenario, Statscan projects nearly one-quarter of the population will be 65 or older in 2050.
The continued aging of Canada is certain to have wide-ranging effects on labour supply and the country’s fiscal health, given the substantial costs of caring for the elderly. And despite the hiring boom, many people struggle to get the medical attention they seek.
Health care, like many industries, will be transformed by artificial intelligence. But there’s a tactile element to many health-related roles that will keep them in high demand, Mr. Bernard said.
“It doesn’t seem like, at the moment at least, AI is going to be really replacing many of these jobs where the human touch is a fundamental aspect.”