Name: Labour force characteristics by census metropolitan area, three-month moving average, seasonally adjusted
Creator: Statistics Canada
License: https://open.canada.ca/en/open-government-licence-canada

Labour force characteristics by census metropolitan area, three-month moving average, seasonally adjusted — AI AnalysisStatistics Canada's Table 14100459 tracks labour force characteristics across Canadian census metropolitan areas from January 2011 to February 2026, revealing a steadily expanding workforce with employment growing by approximately 3.97 million people (+23.2%) over 15 years. The data remains remarkabKey Findings

Canada's working-age population grew by nearly 7 million persons (+25.2%) over the 15-year period, reaching 34.7 million by February 2026, outpacing labour force growth and contributing to slight declines in the participation rate (-2.8%) and employment rate (-1.6%).

Employment rose by approximately 3.97 million people (+23.2%) to reach 21.1 million by February 2026, while the labour force expanded by 4 million persons (+21.6%) to 22.6 million.

The unemployment rate improved over the full period, falling by 1.1 percentage points (-14.1%) to 6.7%, even as the absolute number of unemployed persons rose modestly by 51,100 (+3.5%).

All 15 detected statistical outliers in the dataset occurred during the COVID-19 period in 2020, with the unemployment rate peaking at 13.5% in June 2020 and the employment rate hitting a record low of 57.4% in April 2020 — both far outside their normal ranges.

The dataset is heavily right-skewed, with a mean value of 4,525.93 versus a median of just 39.10, driven by large national population counts (averaging 30,530 thousands) coexisting with small percentage-based rate metrics in the same column.

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