A Fraser Institute analysis of Statistics Canada labor-force data shows Canada added 950,000 public sector jobs between 2015 and 2024, meaning roughly 30% of all net employment growth over that period came from government-linked payrolls rather than the private sector.
Public sector employment expanded 27.0% from 2015 to 2024, while private sector employment grew 13.4%. On an average annual basis, that worked out that public payrolls grew about 59% faster than private payrolls over the period.
That hiring wave pushed public sector employment to 21.5% of all Canadian jobs in 2024, up from 19.7% in 2015.
Even after the hiring surge, 78.5% of all jobs in 2024 remained in the private sector. But the labor-market direction changed meaningfully, because for decades private sector employment had typically been the main engine of job creation over comparable nine-year periods.
The public sector in this analysis includes federal, provincial, local, and Aboriginal governments, along with the Canada and Quebec pension plans and publicly controlled government business enterprises such as Crown corporations, transit companies, most liquor stores, and public utilities. The comparison also excludes self-employment, which the report says was relatively flat over the period.
One of the strongest sub-trends sat inside government itself. Public administration added 328,200 jobs between 2015 and 2024, accounting for almost one-third of all public sector employment growth and about 10% of all net new employment across Canada.
In all provinces except Manitoba, public sector employment growth outpaced private sector employment growth over the 2015 to 2024 period. Atlantic Canada had the heaviest public-sector footprint by 2024, with public employment representing nearly 30% of all jobs, while Alberta sat at the other end of the range at 18.0%, or fewer than one in five jobs.
Canada ranks above the OECD average of 18.4% in government employment, though it remains below the highest-employment Nordic states with Norway leading at 30.1%, followed by Sweden at 28.2% and Denmark at 27.3%.
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