AI Analysis: Employment for agriculture and support activities, monthly, unadjusted for seasonality

Executive Summary

Statistics Canada's Table 14100481 tracks monthly agricultural employment across 16 NAICS categories and 13 Canadian regions from January 2025 to February 2026, revealing a heavily right-skewed distribution where a small number of large sectors — led by the Agriculture Industrial Aggregate and Crop Production — dominate overall employment figures. The unadjusted data shows clear seasonal fluctuation patterns typical of agriculture, with employment values ranging from as few as 4 persons to a peak of 228,093 persons across 2,061 records. Correlation analysis confirms that crop-related categories move in near-perfect lockstep, while niche sectors like aquaculture and sheep & goat farming behave more independently.

Key Findings

• Employment values span an enormous range — from a minimum of 4 persons to a maximum of 228,093 persons — reflecting the diversity of agricultural sub-industries tracked across Canada.
• The mean employment of 7,601 persons is nearly 5x higher than the median of 1,516 persons, confirming a strongly right-skewed distribution driven by a small number of high-employment categories.
• Agriculture Industrial Aggregate and Crop Production are the most tightly correlated NAICS pair (r = 0.995), indicating crop production is the dominant driver of overall agricultural employment.
• Animal Production & Aquaculture and Cattle Ranching & Farming are nearly perfectly correlated (r = 0.993), suggesting cattle ranching accounts for the vast majority of animal production employment.
• The weakest relationships in the dataset are between niche sectors — Aquaculture vs. Sheep & Goat Farming (r = −0.674) and Fruit & Tree Nut Farming vs. Sheep & Goat Farming (r = −0.682) — indicating these sectors trend in opposite directions over time.
• No statistically significant outliers were detected using the IQR method across 224 Canadian records, suggesting agricultural employment remained relatively stable and consistent throughout the January 2025 to February 2026 period.
• The dataset encompasses 192 unique time-series vectors (geography × NAICS combinations) across 13 regions and 16 industry classifications, making it a rich multi-dimensional panel for tracking Canadian agricultural labour trends.