President Donald Trump has repeatedly stated that Canada has an issue with its unemployment rate as he criticizes America’s northern neighbor amid the ongoing trade war.
Revisiting the claims last week, Trump insisted Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government was “destroying” Canada with its immigration policies that he said were “causing problems.” It’s “already showing up in their numbers,” he said on Sept. 23. “Big unemployment.” Trump had made similar claims in August, amid the collapse of U.S.-Canada trade negotiations. “Canada’s unemployment rate is now at 10%, and rapidly rising. Their businesses are fleeing for the U.S., and it’s all because of their failed policies, and inept leadership,” he falsely argued.
Trump’s focus on Canada’s unemployment figures comes amid a prolonged trade standoff between his Administration and Carney’s government. Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods took effect earlier this month, with Carney matching the economic pressure imposed by the U.S. Trump, who has repeatedly threatened to annex Canada, stoked tensions by signing an Executive Order renaming Lake Ontario as “Lake America.” The U.S. import bans on certain Canadian products, largely centered on alcohol and dairy, are due to take effect Tuesday. Carney, meanwhile, is focusing on strengthening international alliances, including pursuing efforts for Canada to become the E.U.’s first “associate member,” in a bid to reduce the country’s economic reliance on the U.S.
As Trump targets Canada’s unemployment rate, here’s what the data says about how the Canadian economy is currently faring.
What is Canada’s unemployment rate—and is it rising?
Canada’s economy lost 42,000 jobs in August, a decrease of 0.2%, according to the country’s Labor Force Survey released on Sept. 4. The figure came in well below reported consensus expectations for a 15k gain.
The losses were concentrated in areas such as business, building, other support services, natural resources, and utilities. The number of public sector employees fell by 20,000 (0.4%), down for the third consecutive month.
Joseph Steinberg, a professor of economics at the University of Toronto, says several factors could be contributing to the job losses, including Canada’s slowing population growth.
Data from Statistics Canada shows the population of Canada reached an estimated 41,798,407 people on July 1, 2026, an increase of 189,425 people from July 1, 2025. This marked the “lowest annual July-to-July (or June to June before 1946) growth in the total size of the population since 1944/1945.”
Despite the job losses, Canada’s unemployment rate in August remained steady at 6.4%, following three consecutive monthly declines from May through July. The unemployment rate is lower in comparison to August 2025, when it stood at 7.1%.
Meanwhile, the employment rate in Canada—the proportion of the population aged 15 and older who are employed—decreased slightly, from 60.9% to 60.8%.
Canada “does not currently have an unemployment problem,” says Steinberg, reflecting on the data.
“Broadly speaking, the labor market in Canada is doing just fine. The unemployment rate is relatively stable,” he adds. “Trump is [also] ranting about immigration as a big problem, but right now Canada’s immigration rate is actually quite low.”
Canada revised its immigration policy in late 2024, in an effort to curb rapid population growth that outpaced job creation. According to federal figures compiled by Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the number of permanent residents admitted in 2025 was around 328,000, compared to 419,000 the year before.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., the unemployment rate in August also remained unchanged at 4.1%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, slightly below the 4.3% recorded in August 2025.
But anyone looking to compare figures from the U.S. and Canada should be aware they have different ways of calculating headline unemployment rates, experts tell TIME.
The surveys cover slightly different populations: Canada’s unemployment figures include people as young as 15, while the U.S. begins counting once people are 16.
“To be measured as unemployed, you also have to indicate in the survey that you are searching somehow for a job. In the U.S., that requirement for ‘search’ is much more active than in Canada,” says Skuterud.
Trump has frequently touted U.S. unemployment rates and job growth. In April, he celebrated March job and unemployment figures, and again in September he called the addition of 162,000 jobs in August “great news” for a “thriving economy.”
However, late last year, U.S. unemployment had risen to a four-year high and it still remains above the 3.7% average recorded in 2019 before the pandemic.
Read More: ‘Buy Canadian’: Meet the Consumers Boycotting American Products as Trade Rift Widens
Trade uncertainty amid the U.S.-Canada standoff
Formal trade negotiations between the U.S. and Canada halted at the end of August, and while officials have remained in contact with their counterparts, neither side has voiced any significant progress.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on Sept. 25 said there was “no urgency” on the U.S. side to reach an agreement.
“President Trump is comfortable where we are on Canada,” he insisted. “The Canadians, again, periodically, they come and they want to have a deal. When they do, we talk. As we saw before, we gave them a deal. They left. They call us now and then, and we have good conversations about potential deals. But no urgency on our side.”
In response, Canadian Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc said Canada is “always ready to talk to the Americans about trying to find the right agreement,” but stressed the country is not “desperate” to reach a trade deal with the U.S. if it has to come at “any cost.”
For businesses, the prolonged uncertainty surrounding the trade standoff can weigh on investment and, in turn, the creation of jobs, experts tell TIME.
“If you’re a business, especially in one of these tariff-exposed industries, in an industry where the customer base is in large part in the U.S. this is not a time where you want to invest in a lot of new capital, and so that affects actual job creation, the labor demand side of the economy is impacted,” says Skuterud.
“The most important thing for businesses is certainty, predictability. They’ve got to know where their customer base is going to be, where their sales are going to be, and there’s a lot of uncertainty in those industries right now.”
The post Trump Insists Canada Has ‘Big Unemployment.’ Here’s What the Data Says appeared first on TIME.
