AI Analysis: Labour force characteristics by visible minority group, three-month moving averages, monthly, unadjusted for seasonality

Executive Summary

Statistics Canada's Table 14100373 reveals persistent labour market disparities between visible minority and non-visible minority populations in Canada from March 2022 to February 2025, with visible minorities averaging a 7.38% unemployment rate compared to 4.97% for non-visible minorities — a gap of roughly 2.4 percentage points. The dataset, covering 16 population groups across 7 regions and 10 labour force characteristics, shows that outcomes vary significantly across specific visible minority communities, with Black and Arab groups facing the highest average unemployment rates (10.0% each) while Japanese and Filipino groups fare considerably better (4.2% and 4.7% respectively). These structural disparities are consistent across the multi-year period and are not explained by short-term volatility, underscoring systemic differences in labour market access.

Key Findings

• Visible minority populations averaged a 7.38% unemployment rate versus 4.97% for non-visible minorities, representing a persistent gap of approximately 2.4 percentage points across the full March 2022–February 2025 period.
• Black and Arab groups recorded the highest average unemployment rates among all tracked groups, both at 10.0%, while Japanese (4.2%) and Filipino (4.7%) groups had the lowest.
• The only statistically extreme outlier detected was the Japanese population group in February 2025, with an unemployment rate of 7.8% — nearly double their average and a Z-score of 3.14.
• The 'Multiple visible minorities' group showed the greatest variability in unemployment outcomes, with a standard deviation of 2.40 and a range spanning from 3.6% to 12.8%, suggesting inconsistent labour market integration.
• The 'Not a visible minority' group had the most stable unemployment trends, with a standard deviation of just 0.43 and a narrow range of 4.2% to 5.8% over the entire study period.
• The dataset's value distribution is strongly right-skewed — the mean (311.13 thousand) is nearly 5 times the median (58.90 thousand) — reflecting that a small number of large population groups dominate aggregate figures while most subgroup values are modest.
• Approximately 10,218 missing values in the dataset reflect suppressed data for smaller population subgroups, highlighting limitations in statistical reliability for granular demographic and regional breakdowns.