Unemployment rate dropped to 6.5% in January, StatCan says

Canada’s unemployment rate dropped to 6.5 per cent in January as fewer people were looking for a job compared with the month before, according to Statistics Canada.

The January Labour Force Survey showed a 0.3-percentage-point drop in the unemployment rate compared with 6.8 per cent in December 2025 after the number of Canadians looking for work fell by 94,000, or 6.1 per cent.

January’s unemployment rate was the lowest since September 2024, and down more than half a point from a peak of 7.1 per cent in both August and September of last year, the agency says.

Trending Now

Statistics Canada says the labour force participation rate, which is the proportion of working-aged Canadians who were either employed or looking for work, decreased 0.4 percentage points to 65 per cent in January after a slight uptick of 0.2 points in December.

The decline in the labour force participation rate was also concentrated in Ontario.

– More to come