Canada’s Job Market Is Booming…If You’re 55 or Older

Millennials might be giving Boomers flack for how easy life in Canada is for them, but statistically they might not be benefiting as much as previously thought. Despite soaring property prices that are assumed to mostly benefit older Canadians, the latest Labour Force Survey from Statistics Canada shows Boomers might be working more now than ever. Despite the robust growth stated most of the jobs created were part-time, and almost half went to people 55 years of age or older.

Employment Rose Across The Country

The good news? The number of employed Canadians grew by 1.19% to 18,225,000. That’s 214,000 more jobs than the same time last year. 60.4k of those were full-time, representing roughly 28% of the growth. The other 72% were part-time gigs. Not exactly great news, but definitely better than a shrinking job market.

Millennials and The Job Market

At least young people are benefiting from the growth, right? Not exactly. Despite 214,000 jobs being added to the economy, the 15-24 demographic only grew by 8,900 (roughly 4.1%). Although to be fair, the number of people in this demographic shrunk by slightly more than 1%. So where are these part-time jobs going?

55+ Crowd Is Working More Than Ever

Boomers may not have it as easy as Millennials might think, as employment above 55 years of age is soaring. Yes, that’s right – forget retiring early. The employment in the 55+ segment grew more than any other single segment to 3.11 million – an increase of around 2.83% year over year. This category also brought with it 105k more jobs, or roughly 49% of all growth.

Curiously, the older crowd doesn’t seem to be landing cushy full-time gigs Millennials have been coveting. Full-time employment growth only represented 39% of the new jobs added to the segment, part-time representing the remaining 61%. Hopefully these are all passion jobs they’re adding, otherwise it’s a sad state of the Canadian economy.

Boomers Might Not Have It Easy

This data point is an interesting conflict to what we’ve been hearing from most politicians. While the average net-worth of older Canadians has soared, more and more appear to be working part-time jobs later in life. This brings into question if the average Canadian actually benefits from the paper gains they’ve been making. If not, we’re really focusing on the wrong things when we think of economic growth.

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