AI Analysis: Employment and average weekly earnings (including overtime) for all employees by industry, monthly, seasonally adjusted, Canada

Executive Summary

Canada's labour market demonstrated sustained long-term growth from January 2001 to March 2025, with total employment rising 41.3% from 12.9 million to 18.2 million workers while average weekly earnings climbed from roughly $500 to over $1,200. The dataset — spanning 291 monthly observations across 435 NAICS industry classifications — reveals a strong positive correlation (r = 0.848) between employment levels and earnings, with the COVID-19 pandemic standing out as the single most extreme disruption in the entire 24-year record. Industry-level analysis highlights deep structural differences, with resource-intensive sectors leading in pay and large service sectors dominating employment counts.

Key Findings

• Total Canadian employment grew 41.3% over 24 years, rising from 12,915,137 in January 2001 to 18,248,468 in March 2025, with only two major interruptions: the 2008–09 financial crisis and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
• The COVID-19 pandemic produced the most extreme employment shocks in the dataset, with March–May 2020 flagged among just 5 outlier months (Z-score > 2.5) out of 291 monthly observations.
• A strong positive Pearson correlation of r = 0.848 exists between total employment and average weekly earnings across 431 industries and over 111,800 data points, indicating that employment growth and wage growth have moved broadly together over the period.
• Average weekly earnings range widely from $213.86 to $3,140.29, but cluster around a mean of $928.86 and median of $900.38, suggesting a relatively symmetric earnings distribution compared to the heavily right-skewed employment distribution.
• Employment figures are extremely skewed across industries: the median industry employs just 39,025 workers while the mean is 231,404 and the maximum exceeds 18.3 million, reflecting the dominance of a small number of very large sectors.
• Resource-intensive industries such as mining, oil & gas, and utilities consistently rank among the highest-paying sectors, while accommodation, food services, and retail trade rank at the lower end of average weekly earnings.
• The dataset covers 435 unique NAICS industry classifications generating 870 distinct time series vectors, providing granular coverage from economy-wide aggregates down to detailed sub-sectors across 291 monthly observations.