The workforce participation rate rose to 65.4%.
The workforce participation rate rose by 0.3%. Year-over-year, it remained unchanged. The number of unemployed people rose by 73,000 to 1.6 million. Youth unemployment rose 0.5 percentage points to 13.3%, somewhat reversing the cumulative 1.9% drop in youth unemployment in October and November of last year.
December job growth was due to increased employment in health care and social assistance, which rose by 21,000 positions. Meanwhile, there was a decline of 18,000 jobs in professional, scientific, and technical services.
As noted by Statistics Canada, the Canadian labour market showed improvement towards the latter part of 2025:
“Employment rose by 181,000 (+0.9%) from August to November, before holding steady in December. The employment rate increased over this period and stood at 60.9% at the end of the year, little changed from December 2024. The unemployment rate also fell to 6.5% in November 2025, its lowest level for the year, before increasing to 6.8% in December, as more people searched for work.”
Spencer Fernando
If you would like to support my work, you can contribute through PayPal at the button below:
Alternatively, if you would like to support my work on an ongoing basis and gain access to exclusive content, you can subscribe for $6 a month or $72 a year.
Subscribe here.
If this piece left you clearer than it found you, that's the point. I write for readers who want to think past the week, to see the longer pattern beneath the daily story, and to come away steadier rather than more agitated.
That longer view gets built somewhere. On Patreon, essay by essay, I'm constructing The Long Work, a body of analysis meant to outlast the news cycle that prompted it. The readers there make it possible. No subsidies, no strings. The work answers to them.
$8/month to read it as it's built, and to have a hand in building it.