The list of Canadian provinces by unemployment rate are statistics that directly refer to the nation's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate. Below is a comparison of the seasonally adjusted unemployment rates by province/territory, sortable by name or unemployment rate. Data provided by Statistics Canada's Labour Force Survey.Labour force characteristics by province – Seasonally adjusted . Statistics Canada. Accessed 2012-12-07. Not seasonally adjusted data reflects the actual current unemployment rate, while seasonally adjusted data removes the seasonal component from the information.
Unemployment by province or territory Province Unemployment percentage of labour forceas of April 2025Monthly percent change (=drop in unemployment)Alberta7.8 0.0% British Columbia6.6 0.2% Manitoba5.8 0.4% Newfoundland and Labrador10.1 0.5% New Brunswick7.9 0.2% Nova Scotia6.7 0.5% Ontario7.6 0.3% Prince Edward Island8.5 1.2% Quebec5.3 0.4% Saskatchewan5.5 0.5% Canada (national)6.9 0.2%
Definitions of modern full employment range from 3% to 6% unemployment rates.
Data differences from US rates Canada uses a different measure to gauge the unemployment than the United States calculation. An analyst with the American Bureau of Labour Statistics stated that if the Canadian unemployment rate were adjusted to U.S. concepts, it would be reduced by 1 percentage point.
Unemployment extremes The lowest level of national unemployment came in 1947 with a 2.2% unemployment rate, a result of the smaller pool of available workers caused by casualties from the Second World War.
The highest level of unemployment throughout Canada was set in December 1982, when the early 1980s recession resulted in 13.1% of the adult population being out of work due to economic factors that originated in the United States. The primary cause of the early 1980s recession was a contractionary monetary policy established by the Federal Reserve System to control high inflation."The downturn was precipitated by a rise in interest rates to levels that exceeded the record rates recorded a year earlier." Congressional Budget Office, "The Prospects for Economic Recovery," February 1982.
During the Great Depression, urban unemployment throughout Canada was 19%; Toronto's rate was 17%, according to the census of 1931. Farmers who stayed on their farms were not considered unemployed.Canada, Bureau of the Census, Unemployment Vol. VI (Ottawa 1931), 1,267
According to data from Statistics Canada, youth unemployment hit 14.6% in July 2025, the highest it had been since 2010 (outside of the COVID-19 pandemic).Poilievre says temporary foreign workers taking jobs from young Canadians, CTVNews
References
Further reading Struthers, James. No fault of their own : unemployment and the Canadian welfare state, 1914-1941 (1983) online