AI Analysis: Employment Insurance beneficiaries (regular benefits) by economic region, monthly, seasonally adjusted

Executive Summary

Statistics Canada's Table 14100344 tracks Employment Insurance regular beneficiaries across 98 Canadian economic regions on a monthly, seasonally adjusted basis from January 2000 to February 2026, encompassing 30,772 records over 314 monthly periods. The dataset captures two major economic shocks — the 2008–2009 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic — with the national count peaking at 1,653,980 beneficiaries in May 2021 before declining to 542,110 as of February 2026. Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto consistently lead all regions in average EI recipients, while Calgary stands out as the most volatile region due to energy sector boom-bust cycles.

Key Findings

• Canada's national EI regular beneficiary count peaked at 1,653,980 persons in May 2021, driven by prolonged COVID-19 pandemic labour market disruptions, and has since declined to 542,110 as of February 2026.
• A total of 38 outlier months were detected using the IQR method, concentrated around two major economic shocks: the 2008–2009 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic era.
• Ontario leads all economic regions with an average of 165,104 monthly EI beneficiaries over the full 26-year period, followed closely by Quebec at 162,646 and Toronto at 68,490.
• The distribution of beneficiary counts is strongly right-skewed, with a mean of 18,111 persons more than three times the median of 5,430, reflecting the dominance of large provincial and national aggregates over smaller regional counts.
• An unexpected low of just 164,260 EI beneficiaries was recorded in August 2020, likely because many displaced workers shifted to the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) rather than traditional EI during that period.
• Calgary, Alberta was identified as the most volatile economic region with a Coefficient of Variation of 0.74, reflecting the region's sensitivity to boom-bust cycles in the energy sector.
• Correlation analysis found only weak linear relationships among numerical variables, with the strongest being VALUE vs. COORDINATE at r = -0.212, suggesting that higher-coded regions tend to have slightly fewer beneficiaries on average.