AI Analysis: Multiple jobholders by usual hours worked at all jobs, monthly, unadjusted for seasonality

Executive Summary

Statistics Canada's Table 14100048 tracks Canadian multiple jobholders by hours worked across all jobs from January 1976 to February 2026, revealing a dramatic six-fold increase from approximately 399,700 to 2,418,700 persons over 50 years. The dataset's 23,457 observations are strongly right-skewed (mean 74.9K vs. median 34.6K), driven by aggregate totals and heavy-hour categories, while the unadjusted data preserves clear seasonal patterns throughout. Despite major economic disruptions over five decades, growth has been remarkably gradual with no single month registering as a statistical outlier at the Z-score threshold of 2.5.

Key Findings

• Total multiple jobholders grew more than six-fold over 50 years, rising from ~399,700 persons in January 1976 to ~2,418,700 persons by February 2026, with a record peak of 1,244,800 persons recorded in February 2025.
• The distribution of 23,457 observations is strongly right-skewed, with a mean of 74,900 persons more than double the median of 34,600 persons, indicating most hour-category values are low while a few large aggregates pull the average upward.
• The 'All jobs, total multiple jobholders, all hours' category dominates the dataset with the highest mean (182,580 persons) and widest historical range (1,235,000 persons), reflecting its role as the aggregate of all sub-categories.
• 'All jobs, 50 hours or more' has the second-highest mean at 81,840 persons with a range of 511,400 persons, suggesting heavy-hour multiple jobholding is both common and highly variable over time.
• 'All jobs, 40 hours' has the lowest mean of just 18,490 persons, indicating that working exactly 40 hours across all jobs is the least common pattern among multiple jobholders.
• No monthly data point exceeded the Z-score outlier threshold of 2.5 in the total series, confirming that Canada's multi-decade rise in multiple jobholding has been a gradual structural trend rather than the result of sudden spikes.
• Correlation analysis across 8 'Main job' and 8 'All jobs' hour categories reveals both strong positive correlations among adjacent hour brackets and negative correlations between very short and very long hour categories, reflecting substitution effects in multiple jobholding behaviour.