Of all Canadian provinces, Quebec has posted the lowest employment growth since the start of the year.
Over the last 11 months, from January to November 2024, Quebec created only 24,700 jobs, according to the latest seasonally adjusted data revealed by the Institut de la tourisme du Québec following the publication of the Population Survey active by Statistics Canada.
This represents an anemic growth of 0.5% compared to the same period of the previous year 2023.
In Ontario, with which François Legault’s government particularly likes to compare itself, employment growth since the start of the year stands at 1.5%, three times higher than in Quebec.
The differences are even more pronounced with all the provinces. While we are recording job growth of 0.5% in Quebec, the rest of Canada is showing growth of 2%.
How much does Quebec contribute to job creation?
Of all the 342,500 jobs created in Canada during the first 11 months of the year, Quebec’s “contribution”, with its 24,700 jobs created, represents only 7.2%.
This is excessively low knowing that Quebec constitutes 22% of the entire Canadian working population, which includes workers and people looking for work.
Meanwhile, Ontario managed to create 119,900 new jobs over the last 11 months, or 35% of all jobs created in Canada this year. Is job creation the heel? of Achille of the Legault government?
Unfortunately, the answer is YES!
It is in fact Quebec which has posted the lowest rate of employment growth in Canada since the CAQ government of François Legault came to power.
In seasonally adjusted terms, the number of jobs has increased in Quebec by only 6.5% since 2018.
Quebec therefore comes at the bottom of the pack for job creation in Canada. As proof, according to my calculations, here is the percentage increase recorded in the other provinces, since the end of December 2018 until last November, that is to say in six years.
- Ontario: 10,9%
- Alberta: 11%
- British Columbia: 9.1%
- Saskatchewan: 6,8%
- Manitoba: 8,8%
- New Brunswick: 10%
- Prince Edward Island: 20%
- Newfoundland-Labrador: 7.2%
With our 6.5% increase in jobs created since 2018, we are very far from the Canadian average. In fact, across Canada as a whole, the number of jobs increased by 9.5%. And if we limit ourselves to the rest of Canada, you should know that the increase in the number of jobs since 2018 reaches 10.4%.
In his assessment of the year 2024, François Legault was proud to tell us: “We had better economic growth per capita than Ontario, than the rest of Canada. It’s true for the economy, it’s true for wages, it’s true, above all, for disposable income.”
It’s a shame that Quebec is lagging behind so much in the job market.
Mr. Legault, we will have to “work” on this!
