What do Canadians do for a Living?
May 1st was International Workers Day, celebrated in many countries around the world. It made me wonder what Canadians work at in 2025. Around 200 years ago, Napolean described the British as a nation of shopkeepers. This was meant to be slightly derisive and demeaning, I suppose, in contrast to his noble French farmers, miners and winemakers. If you were paying attention to the over-heated rhetoric in the recent Federal election, you might think that Canada is a nation of auto makers, potash miners, dairy farmers and aluminum smelter workers. In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. If we really wanted to be truthful about what most Canadians do, we would be described as a nation of nurses, schoolteachers, store clerks and government bureaucrats.
Statistics Canada, or StatsCan as it is more widely known, keeps a watchful eye on the 19 million employed Canadians, and a deep dive into its data is instructive. Here are some things I learned when trying to answer a few of the questions that were rated as highly important in the election.
- Everyone seems very concerned about the Canadian auto and auto parts manufacturing sectors in light of U.S. tariffs. How big is that industry? Will the 25% tariffs now in place cripple a crucial Canadian sector? The answer is surprising. Only 125,000 Canadians are employed in manufacturing motor vehicles and auto parts. That’s much less than 1% of the labour force. We are told the auto industry supports many other jobs, but the great majority of these are workers in car and truck dealers (203,000), car repair (123,000) and retailers of tires and parts like Canadian Tire (45,000) that would be in business even if no cars or parts were made in Canada. If all the car plants and parts makers in Canada closed tomorrow (which is NOT going to happen), the unemployment rate would rise by about 0.7%. It is a bit of a mystery as to why such a tiny industry punches so high above its weight, and why both Provincial and Federal governments are so anxious to throw billions of dollars in grants, subsidies and tax relief to any company willing to open a new plant.
- The supply management system for dairy products and eggs is a hot button issue in negotiations with the U.S. over tariffs. Canadians pay a lot for cheese, butter and eggs due to a regime which regulates, through quotas, how much of these commodities can be produced. How many people work in agriculture in general and in dairy farming in particular? Again, the answer is surprising. Around 100 years ago the majority of Canadians lived and worked on farms. Today only around 300,000 workers are employed in agriculture, about 1.5% of the labour force. Of these, fully half are seasonal employees (including 65,000 Temporary Foreign Workers), and 14% are part-time. There are only about 105,000 full-time farmers in Canada. In Quebec there are 4,215 dairy farms, which on average own 78 cows and employ fewer than 3 people. In all of Canada there are about 1,200 egg farmers. This would again appear to be an industry with influence that exceeds its economic impact by a large measure. Given the importance of Quebec in the current political environment, it is hard to imagine this changing soon.
- So, what do Canadians really do for a living? The overwhelming number of employed Canadians, 81% in total, work in service industries. Of these the biggest occupations are:
Retail Trade 2.8 million
Health Care 2.4 million
Education 1.5 million
Government 1.3 million
Hospitality 1.3 million
In the goods-producing industries, the biggest employers are:
Manufacturing 1.6 million
Construction 1.2 million
Mining 0.2 million (including oil and gas)
Seafood 45,000 including processing and aquaculture
To put it another way, for every factory worker there are almost two store clerks, and for every construction worker there are two people employed in hospitals. For every intrepid fisherman there are 30 people working in hotels and restaurants and for every oil field worker there are six government bureaucrats.
The new government in Ottawa will be faced with difficult negotiations and will have to make hard choices. It would be nice to think that they will be guided by the realities of the Canadian labour market. This would be much more likely if the average Canadian knew what everybody else was doing for a living.
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