Actalent Canada Labour Market Brief: A Look at Trends in Q4 2025

Actalent's quarterly Labour Market and Economy Report connects important dots between data and trends across Canada’s engineering and sciences hiring landscape. Readers can expect to learn about job growth, wage growth, inflation, unemployment rates, labour force participation rates and other key factors that impact the attraction, hiring and retention of workers.

Executive Summary

This report uses data that was published prior to Statistics Canada’s release of The 2025 Revisions of the Labour Force Survey (LFS), which updated population benchmarks, geographic boundaries and industry/occupation classifications, potentially affecting some related figures. Revised data will be incorporated in Actalent’s next quarterly report.

Canadian employment rose by 128,400 jobs in Q4 2025, the largest quarterly increase of the year (compared with gains of 44,500 in Q1, 99,300 in Q2, and a decline of 45,900 in Q3). The finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing sector posted the steepest decline, shedding 14,800 jobs, while health care and social assistance recorded the strongest growth with an increase of 59,100 jobs. Despite these gains, the labour market continued to face headwinds in the fourth quarter, including ongoing uncertainty around international trade policies. Monthly employment rose by 66,600 in October, 53,600 in November and 8,200 in December.

The unemployment rate fell from an average of 7.0% in Q3 2025 to 6.7% in Q4 2025.

Among the industries Actalent supports, Q4 2025 unemployment rates were as follows: healthcare (1.9%), utilities (2.2%), professional, scientific and technical services (3.5%), manufacturing (3.6%), and construction (5.7%).

Year-over-year inflation declined from 2.4% in September to 2.2% in October and November, before returning to 2.4% in December. December’s increase was largely affected by the temporary GST/HST tax break that was effective December 14, 2024 through February 15, 2025, putting upward pressure on year-over-year changes for the previously-exempted goods and services. The Bank of Canada lowered the policy rate by 25 basis points at its October meeting and maintained the rate at its December meeting. In December, the BoC pointed to an improving labour market and economy despite elevated uncertainty.

The year-over-year average hourly wage rate for all employees increased by 3.5% from Q4 2024 to Q4 2025, slightly above the annual wage growth observed in Q3. In terms of “real” earnings (adjusted for inflation), wages continue to outpace inflation.