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Canada’s Restrictive Immigration Policies Are Achieving Their Intended Goals. But Are There Unintended Consequences? (Indeed Hiring Lab)
Using the share of clicks on Canadian job postings from jobseekers outside the country as an early read on migration, this analysis by Sneha Puri finds that foreign interest in Canadian jobs fell from almost 8% of all clicks in July 2023 to 3% by September 2026, tracking the federal government’s tighter limits on temporary migration. The drop is sharpest in engineering occupations such as civil, electrical and chemical engineering, even as postings in engineering fields remain well above the overall index and are rising quickly, and the US share of foreign clicks has slipped from 28% in late 2024 to 21%. The post cautions that a shrinking inflow of temporary residents could tighten labour supply in hard-to-fill fields and weigh on communities that have relied on international students, and it argues that policy-makers need to manage these trade-offs rather than treat lower inflows as a pure win.
Workforce insights: Demographics in the retail trade sector, 2017 to 2024 (Statistics Canada)
This Statistics Canada analysis uses administrative tax data to track who works in the retail trade sector, which employs more than 2 million people, from 2017 to 2024. It finds that the workforce remains young but is aging, with the share of employees aged 15 to 24 falling from 35.5% to 31.7% while the share aged 65 and older rose from 3.7% to 5.5%, and that part-time work accounted for 72.0% of employees in 2024. The share of non-permanent residents, including international students and temporary foreign workers, rose from 2.8% in 2017 to 13.7% in 2024, and the paper notes that retailers are also adopting AI, with use increasing nearly fivefold in two years to 19.2% of retail businesses.
2026 Canadian Small Business Workforce Report (Wagepoint)
Based on de-identified payroll data from about 6,800 Canadian small and mid-sized businesses and 106,000 employees between 2019 and 2025, this report from payroll provider Wagepoint finds that average headcount per business rose 44%, from 13.3 to 19.1 employees, while the annual separation rate fell from 38% to 27%. Gen Z’s share of the small business workforce more than doubled from 18% to 38%, nearly matching millennials at 41%, with the largest increase in Atlantic Canada, where the share rose from 14% to 37%. Median hourly pay rose 27% over the period, outpacing inflation, and the report notes that its figures reflect Wagepoint’s customers rather than all Canadian small businesses.
The 4:1 change management return most organizations are leaving on the table (Deloitte & Workplace Intelligence)
Based on a survey of 1,000 change management leaders across the US, UK, Australia and Canada, fielded in June and July 2026, this Deloitte study conducted with Workplace Intelligence finds that 70% say their latest transformation initiative failed to deliver its intended value. It reports that 69% say the initiative increased employee workload and burnout, 66% say employees left as a direct result of poorly managed change and 61% feel AI transformation is moving faster than employees can handle. The report associates every $1 invested in change management with $4 in realized business value and recommends treating change as a standing capability, including by measuring the human cost of change alongside the business case.
Canada’s Health Workforce: An integrated summary based on Statistics Canada data, 2025 (Statistics Canada)
Released Oct. 19, this study draws on the Labour Force Survey, the Job Vacancy and Wage Survey, and the Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours to examine employment, vacancies, workforce composition and wages across health occupations from 2016 to 2025. It finds that just over 1.7 million people worked in health occupations in 2025, up 19.4% from 2019, with registered nursing occupations seeing the largest increase since before the pandemic. Job vacancies in the sector have eased from their 2023 peak but remain elevated, at a rate of 4.5% compared with 2.7% overall and 12.3% for licensed practical nurses, while inflation-adjusted wages for core-aged registered nurses fell 1.4% between 2019 and 2025.
