AI Analysis: Employment by establishment size, monthly, unadjusted for seasonality

Executive Summary

Statistics Canada's Table 14100067 tracks monthly employment across establishment sizes from January 1997 to February 2026, covering 156,281 records across 11 regions, 19 industries, and 5 establishment size categories. Total Canadian employment grew 5.5% over nearly three decades, from approximately 10,921K to 11,523K persons, with large employers (500+ employees) leading relative growth at +8.8%. The data is heavily right-skewed and all establishment size categories move in near-perfect correlation (r≥0.997), reflecting broad economic cycles affecting businesses of all sizes simultaneously.

Key Findings

• Total Canadian employment grew 5.5% over the full period, rising from 10,921K to 11,523K persons between January 1997 and February 2026.
• Large establishments (500+ employees) posted the strongest relative growth at +8.8% (1,338.7K to 1,456.6K), while medium-large firms (100–500 employees) had the weakest at +4.4%.
• Small businesses (fewer than 20 employees) remain the single largest employment category at 4,005.6K persons, representing the largest share of total employment throughout the entire period.
• The dataset is strongly right-skewed, with a mean employment of 58.0K persons nearly 9x higher than the median of 6.3K, and a standard deviation of 279.6K reflecting extreme variability driven by large establishments.
• All five establishment size categories are near-perfectly correlated (r≥0.997), with '20–99 employees' and 'Total employees' showing the strongest relationship at r=0.999, indicating employment across all business sizes rises and falls together.
• The dataset spans 156,281 records with employment values ranging from 0.2K to 11,746.4K persons across 11 geographic areas, 19 NAICS industry classifications, 3 gender categories, and 9 age groups.
• No statistical outliers were detected using IQR-based methods, with all data points falling within the expected range of 10,058.7K to 12,603.8K persons, though natural seasonal fluctuations are visible given the data is unadjusted for seasonality.