Payroll employment changes, by sector, in June. (Source: Statistics Canada, Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours (2612), table 14-10-0220-01.)
Canada’s employment figures took a hit in June, reports Statistics Canada in its latest look at payroll employment, earnings, hours and job vacancies. The number of employees receiving pay and benefits from their employer, referred to as payroll employment, decreased by 32,900 for the month. That 0.2 per cent overall drop gave back the 0.1 per cent gain reported in May. On a year-over-year basis, payroll employment remained ahead by 41,000 workers, or 0.2 per cent, compared to June of last year.
One of the larger contributors to the monthly contraction was Canada’s construction sector, which continued the slide it’s been on since December of last year. Payroll employment decreased by 5,200 positions, or 0.4 per cent, in June. The monthly decline was led by specialty trade contractors, non-residential building construction and residential building construction. On a seasonally adjusted basis, there were 1,176,000 workers in Canada’s construction sector in June
Between December and this past June, payroll employment in the sector fell by 13,000 positions, or just over one per cent. Leading the sector in employment declines over this period were specialty trade contractors, who posted a drop of 5,600 jobs, heavy and civil engineering, which had 4,000 fewer workers, and residential building construction, which saw job contractions in the range of 3,900, or 2.3 per cent.
In June, statistically significant monthly payroll employment declines were recorded in 10 of the 20 sectors included in the survey, with all but two of the 20 posting gains, and of those, only public administration sector growth was statistically significant.
Meanwhile, job vacancies in Canada edged up by 12,100, or 2.5 per cent in June, coming in at 492,000. Compared to one year earlier, vacancies were down my more than 10 per cent in June.
The job vacancy rate, which corresponds to the number of vacant positions as a proportion of total labour demand, was 2.8 per cent in June, up from 2.7 per cent the previous month. Year over year, the rate was down by 0.3 percentage points.
Construction was the only sector to record a significant monthly change in the number of job vacancies, as the sector saw vacancies increase by 4,600 (13.1 per cent) to 39,500, partially offsetting a decline of 5,400 in May. Despite the jump, job vacancies in the sector were down by almost 10 per cent compared with June of 2024, and by more than half since the peak of 89,000 recorded in April of 2022.
The job vacancy rate in construction was 3.2 per cent this past June 2025, up from the 2.9 per cent posted in May but down 0.4 percentage points from June of last year.
