Government Jobs Drove 30% of Canada’s Employment Growth Over Past Decade: Study

People cross Elgin Street in view of Parliament Hill in Ottawa, in a file photo. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

Government job growth outpaced that of the private sector as the public service added nearly one million positions over the past decade, accounting for nearly one-third of the total employment increase in Canada, a new study suggests.

Canada experienced a rise of 950,000 government sector jobs from 2015 to 2024, representing approximately 30 percent of the total employment gains in the country during that timeframe, according to a recently-released report from the Fraser Institute.

“In Canada, employment in the government sector has skyrocketed over the last 10 years,”  University of Regina economist and Fraser Institute senior fellow Jason Child said in a press release about the report, which he authored.

He noted that government jobs have expanded at an average rate of 2.7 percent annually, in contrast to the 1.7 percent growth rate observed in the private sector. Meanwhile, public sector employment as a share of total employment has grown from 19.7 percent in 2015 to 21.5 percent in 2024.

The largest growth in the public sector came from the increase in public administration jobs, which rose from 5.4 percent of total employment in 2015 to 6 percent by 2024, the study found. There were 328,200 additional public administrators in 2024 than there were in 2015. This represents nearly one-third of the increase in Canadian public sector employment and constitutes 10 percent of all net new jobs.

Child said this rate of growth in the public sector doesn’t signal a healthy economy.

“The larger the government’s share of employment, the greater the ultimate burden on taxpayers to support government workers—government does not pay for itself,” Childs said in the press release.

He noted in his report that the trend toward sustained strong public sector employment growth is troubling because of Canada’s weak productivity and the “persistent deficits by both provinces and the federal government.”

Job Growth By Province

Childs’ report broke down public sector job growth from province to province. The statistics indicate that total government employment growth outstripped the private sector in every province except Manitoba.

Government jobs in Manitoba increased 1.5 percent between 2015 and 2024 while jobs in the private sector rose 1.9 percent.

The largest gaps in employment growth between the government sector and the private sector occurred in Newfoundland and Labrador, where public sector jobs increased by 2.1 percent while private sector employment fell 0.2 percent over the past decade. Public sector employment made up 25 percent of Newfoundland’s workforce in 2015 and 29.6 percent in 2024.

There were also large discrepancies in British Columbia, Quebec, and New Brunswick, where public job gains ranged from 1.3 percent to 1.9 percent higher than private sector growth during the same 10-year period.

Public sector employment in New Brunswick made up 23.8 percent of its workforce in 2015 and 27.5 percent in 2024. Those numbers sat at 21.2 percent and 23.9 percent in Quebec and 18.5 percent and 20.5 percent in B.C.

The smallest gaps were in Alberta and Prince Edward Island, where public sector growth exceeded private sector increases by 0.4 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively. Alberta’s public sector jobs grew 1 percent between 2015 and 2024 while P.E.I.’s rose 1.7 percent.

Overall, public sector employment made up 19.7 percent of Canada’s workforce in 2015 and 21.5 percent in 2024, for an overall growth of 1.8 percent.

Childs expressed concern about the upward trend in public sector employment but said it is not too late to reverse it.

“While the trend toward sustained strong public sector employment growth is worrisome, the situation is not yet out of control,” he wrote. “There is still an opportunity to apply the brakes and reverse disproportionate growth in the public sector as part of a strategy to rebalance the Canadian economy and improve long-term government fiscal sustainability.”

The Liberal government announced in Budget 2025 last month its plan to cut the size of the federal public service by 40,000 positions.

“We need to bring back the civil service to a more sustainable level but we’re going to be very compassionate,” Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said on Nov. 4, noting that some of the job cuts will be through attrition and early retirements. 

The federal public service expanded from 257,034 employees in 2015 to 367,772 in 2024 but the budget has established a target to decrease the number of federal positions to 330,000 by 2028-2029.  

Prime Minister Mark Carney tasked his cabinet ministers over the summer with finding up to 15 percent in savings in day-to-day operational spending over the next three years. At least some of those job cuts have already occurred.

The federal department of justice announced in June it would be laying off 264 people, saying the jobs were no longer needed and it was facing budget pressures. It follows job losses in other government agencies, including the Canada Revenue Agency, Employment and Social Development Canada, and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

The federal employee count stood at 357,965 as of March 31, 2025, representing a 2.6 percent drop from the previous year.