The new jobs numbers are in: outside Alberta, Canada is losing jobs
Alberta added about 41,300 jobs in the 12 months to October and the rest of the country lost about 24,800, leaving a national gain of about 16,500. Since November 2015, the number of public-sector employees has risen 28.7 per cent and private-sector employees 18.3 per cent.
BECOME A MEMBER
Article by Rebel News staff.
Tonight on The Ezra Levant Show: Statistics Canada's October jobs numbers show Alberta carrying the national labour market while the rest of Canada sheds work, capping a decade in which government payrolls grew far faster than the private economy that pays for them.
The Labour Force Survey released on November 6, 2026, puts national employment up by about 16,500 over the 12 months to October, seasonally adjusted. Alberta alone added about 41,300. Without Alberta, the rest of the country was down about 24,800 jobs, and private-sector employment outside Alberta was flat to down, off about 4,900 over the same year.
The longer record starts in November 2015, the month the Liberals took power. Since then the number of public-sector employees has risen from 3.494 million to 4.498 million, an increase of 28.7 per cent, while private-sector employees went from 11.718 million to 13.864 million, up 18.3 per cent. Public jobs now make up 21.3 per cent of all employment, up from 19.5 per cent, and about 31 per cent of the net new jobs since then were in the public sector. The Fraser Institute, using the same series by year, found public-sector employment grew roughly twice as fast as private from 2015 to 2024.
That is some distance from 2014, when a New York Times analysis of the Luxembourg Income Study found Canada's middle class had caught up with America's. Median after-tax income for a Canadian family of four was more than $75,000, level with the United States in 2010 and, the paper wrote, "now most likely higher." On February 11 of that year, Justin Trudeau said, "The commitment needs to be a commitment to grow the economy and the budget will balance itself." In Regina on August 12, 2015, he promised to grow the economy "from the heart outwards."
Young workers were left behind. Unemployment among Canadians aged 15 to 24 was 12.2 per cent in November 2015, on the revised series, and 13.7 per cent in October 2026. In Ontario the youth unemployment rate climbed from 13.2 per cent to 16.1 per cent, or about one in six young people looking for work. The working-age population grew by 5.71 million over the period and employment by 3.23 million, pulling the overall employment rate down from 61.3 per cent to 60.5 per cent.
Living standards have barely moved. Real GDP per capita, in 2017 chained dollars, was $57,637 in 2015 and $60,073 in 2025, a gain of 4.2 per cent in 10 years, with declines of 1.3 per cent in 2023 and 1.4 per cent in 2024. Carolyn Rogers, the Bank of Canada's senior deputy governor, called weak productivity an emergency, saying, "It's time to break the glass." Finance Canada's own briefing binder conceded that business investment had fallen as a share of GDP and lagged every other G7 country since 2015.
Ottawa's answer was a series of subsidized battery plants, promoted by François-Philippe Champagne as industry minister and later finance minister. Trudeau called Honda's April 25, 2024, announcement the "largest auto investment in Canada's history." Honda has since indefinitely suspended its Alliston EV and battery project. Northvolt, which was to build a $7-billion plant in Quebec, collapsed into bankruptcy. Stellantis sold its stake in Windsor's NextStar plant to LG for what filings described as a nominal fee, and PowerCo's St. Thomas opening has been pushed from 2027 to 2029.
The existing industrial base shrank in the meantime. Motor vehicle manufacturing employed 42,117 people in 2015 and 35,593 in 2025, a drop of 15.5 per cent. Iron and steel mills went from 16,814 employees to 14,603, down 13.1 per cent, before tariffs brought roughly 1,000 layoff notices at Algoma, up to about 500 at Stelco in Hamilton and Nanticoke, and the permanent closure of ArcelorMittal's Parkdale wire plant in Hamilton in June 2025.
As Mark Carney and Champagne urge Canadians to put their elbows up, Statistics Canada's own tables leave them to explain why the country outside Alberta lost nearly 25,000 jobs in a year.
GUEST: Catherine Christensen, Lawyer for Valour Law, who are preparing a class action for veterans who say Veterans Affairs offered them MAID instead of help with their PTSD, especially with Remembrance Day this week.
COMMENTS
-
Bruce Atchison commented 2026-11-09 20:49:58 -0500The sad fact is that many people want free stuff rather than freedom. They believe the lie that government will take care of them. As we see with the Liberals, government takes care of itself and its cronies.
