Two Months of Job Losses: What Canada's September Numbers Mean for Your Mortgage File

What Statistics Canada reported

Employment across Canada fell by 68,000 in September, a decline of 0.3%, following a 42,000 fall in August. Together the two months have more than erased the gains from earlier in the year.

Those are the headline figures in Statistics Canada's Labour Force Survey for September, released 9 October. Unemployment edged up 0.1 percentage points to 6.5%. The declines were concentrated among workers aged 15 to 24 (down 48,000) and women aged 25 to 54 (down 28,000).

• Educational services: down 35,000 (-2.2%).
• Health care and social assistance: down 23,000 (-0.8%), the first monthly decrease since December 2022.
• Manufacturing: down 13,000 (-0.7%).
• Public-sector employees: down 70,000 (-1.5%), the fourth monthly decline in a row. Private-sector employment was little changed.
• Average hourly wages: up 2.3% from a year earlier, to $37.64.

Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected a modest gain of about 10,000 jobs, according to Canadian Mortgage Trends' report of the Bloomberg story. Bloomberg tied the weakness to the U.S. trade war, noting that new 50% U.S. tariffs on $20 billion of Canadian goods took effect on 22 August, and said job losses across August and September total 110,000.

The Ontario picture

Ontario's employment edged down 20,000 (-0.2%) in September, but it was still up 86,000 (+1.1%) compared with a year earlier. The province's unemployment stood at 7.0%, little changed on the month and down 0.9 percentage points from twelve months ago, according to Statistics Canada.

That mix, a soft month inside a better year, is easy to misread in either direction. Our August jobs piece described a similar shape: Ontario lost jobs in the month, yet its unemployment sat below where it was a year before. Education stands out in the provincial detail, with Ontario's educational-services employment down 19,000 (-3.2%) from September 2025.

What a lender actually looks at

A national employment figure is not on any mortgage application. What is on it is your employment status, your income and the documents proving both.

That is by design. OSFI's Guideline B-20, which sets out how federally regulated lenders should underwrite residential mortgages, lists employment status and verification of income among the documentation a lender should keep on file for an approval. Other lenders follow their own, similar standards.

Where the headlines do matter is at the edges. Lenders can tighten their appetite for files that look less stable when conditions soften. We covered the self-employed version of this in how lenders assess self-employed income, and the trade-war angle in the trade war and your mortgage file.

Practical steps if your job situation could change

• Tell your broker early. A change in employer, contract type or hours between approval and closing is something to raise before a lender finds it. That conversation is much easier before an issue than after.
• Keep your documents current. An up-to-date employment letter and recent pay stubs make a file easier to move if a lender asks for a refresh.
• Know your renewal path. A straight renewal with your current lender does not re-run the stress test; switching lenders does. This article explains the difference.
• Keep a payment buffer in view. Our calculators let you test a payment at a higher borrowing cost before you need to.

Why this also matters for the Bank of Canada

The jobs numbers land in the middle of a debate. Servus Credit Union's chief economist, Charles St-Arnaud, told Bloomberg the data adds to the Bank of Canada's dilemma: a weak labour market and a likely growth slowdown on one side, high fuel prices that risk broader inflation on the other. He expects the Bank to hold for the remainder of the year unless inflation pressures broaden.

Bloomberg reported that traders in overnight swaps had priced a hike by December before the report, and that those expectations eased slightly after it. The next inflation reading arrives 19 October, with the Bank's decision on 28 October. We looked at the split among forecasters in this earlier piece. Nothing in a single jobs report settles the question, which is the point: it is another reason to plan around a range of outcomes instead of one.

The Bank of Canada’s overnight target, inflation and Ontario jobs figures are charted month by month on Market Pulse, with the source named on every number.