Payrolls fall 49,600 in August, but census hiring distorts it

The number of Canadian employees on payrolls fell by 49,600, or 0.3 per cent, in August, but nearly half of the drop came from public administration, where Statistics Canada says federal job swings largely reflect temporary staffing for the 2026 Census.

The agency reported the figures Thursday in its Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours. Payroll employment had edged down by 15,700, or 0.1 per cent, in July. Compared with a year earlier, payrolls were still up 57,200, or 0.3 per cent.

Employment fell in 10 of the 20 sectors tracked. Public administration lost 22,300 jobs, or 1.6 per cent, after a 10,200 decline in July. Federal public administration accounted for 15,900 of the August loss, a 4.1 per cent drop, and local, municipal and regional public administration lost another 5,900.

The agency said federal employment rose by a similar amount between March and June before falling 23,400, or 6.0 per cent, from June to August. It linked those movements largely to temporary Census work. By our calculation, payrolls outside public administration fell by about 27,300 in August, a much smaller decline than the headline suggests.

Other sectors were weaker too. Accommodation and food services shed 6,800 jobs, with most of the decline in full-service restaurants and limited-service eating places. Information and cultural industries lost 5,000, led by motion picture and sound recording and by telecommunications. Construction lost 4,500, mainly in residential building construction and in building equipment and finishing contractors. Retail trade lost 4,400, driven by food and beverage retailers and by clothing and accessories stores.

The monthly declines followed earlier gains in several of those industries. Construction payrolls had risen 7,500 from April to July, and retail had added 24,000 from February to May. On a yearly basis, construction employment is up 10,700, with Alberta and Quebec leading the gains.

For workers, the more important signal may be the demand for new hires. Job vacancies were little changed at 507,200 in August, the eighth straight month with little variation, and 5.4 per cent higher than a year ago. The job vacancy rate was 2.8 per cent, unchanged since December 2025.

Statistics Canada said there were 2.9 unemployed people for every vacancy in August, the same as in July and down from 3.3 a year earlier. The agency attributed the yearly improvement to a drop of 130,600, or 8.2 per cent, in unemployment according to the Labour Force Survey, and to more vacancies. Vacancies rose year over year in accommodation and food services, transportation and warehousing, and manufacturing.

Pay kept growing. Average weekly earnings rose 0.5 per cent in the month to $1,355 and were up 3.7 per cent from a year earlier, after a 3.2 per cent yearly increase in July. Average weekly hours were 33.4, little changed on the month and up 0.6 per cent on the year. The agency cautioned that earnings growth can reflect changes in wages, the mix of jobs, hours worked and base-year effects, not only pay raises.

Provincial pay growth varied widely. New Brunswick recorded the largest yearly increase at 6.0 per cent, followed by British Columbia at 5.2 per cent and Manitoba at 5.1 per cent. Quebec was up 1.7 per cent and the Northwest Territories 1.1 per cent. Our province-by-province look at weekly earnings has the full list.

The release adds to a picture of a labour market that is soft in hiring but not collapsing. Our earlier reporting found that the public sector shed 70,000 jobs as private hiring stalled in the Labour Force Survey, and that youth hiring fell most in jobs least exposed to AI. The payroll survey counts jobs on employers’ books, while the Labour Force Survey asks households, so the two do not always move together.

How we did this: we read Statistics Canada’s The Daily release of Oct. 29, 2026, and its Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours and job vacancy tables, including Table 14-10-0223-01. The estimate of payroll change outside public administration is our own subtraction of the public administration change from the total, and it is not a Statistics Canada figure.

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