AI Analysis: Employment by class of worker, monthly, seasonally adjusted and unadjusted

Executive Summary

Statistics Canada's Table 14100288 provides 50 years of monthly Canadian employment data (January 1976–February 2026), covering 197,350 records across 11 geographies, 5 worker classes, and 3 gender categories. Total Canadian employment reached approximately 21.4 million persons by the latest period, with private sector employees consistently forming the largest share of the workforce. The dataset reveals long-term structural growth in Canadian employment, punctuated by notable disruptions including the COVID-19 collapse in 2020 and a suspicious data anomaly in late 2025.

Key Findings

• The dataset spans 50 years (January 1976–February 2026) with 197,350 records, covering 11 geographies, 5 worker classes, and 3 gender categories, last updated March 13, 2026.
• Total employed persons peaked near 21,449,700 — the highest value in the dataset — while the overall mean employment value of 921,900 is heavily skewed above the median of 112,500, reflecting the dominance of large aggregate categories.
• Private sector employees are the largest worker sub-category with a mean of 1,047,400 persons, compared to public sector employees at 333,200 and self-employed workers at 239,300 — the smallest class tracked.
• No months formally exceeded the 3-standard-deviation outlier threshold due to the dataset's extremely wide standard deviation (~10,494,000), but the COVID-19 period (March–May 2020) stands out visually as the most significant real-world employment disruption.
• A highly anomalous back-to-back swing was recorded in late 2025: a rise of +21,083,000 persons in November 2025 followed immediately by a drop of -21,093,000 in December 2025, strongly suggesting a data anomaly requiring further investigation.
• The five worker classes each contain 39,301 records, confirming a well-balanced dataset, and correlation analysis shows Total Employed and Private Sector Employees move most closely together, while Public Sector and Self-Employed show weaker mutual correlations.
• Both seasonally adjusted and unadjusted figures are available across all categories, enabling robust trend analysis and direct period-to-period comparisons across Canada's 10 provinces and national totals.