According to new data from Statistics Canada (StatsCan), Canada’s workforce is ageing.
This data raises questions about whether Canada is placing more emphasis on what some are already calling a ‘wisdom economy’ rather than a ‘knowledge economy’ of recent years. Also, the increasing cost of living is forcing older workers to remain in their jobs for longer.
StatsCan’s study, released on Wednesday, 24 June ’26, found that the number of enterprises with an average worker age over 40 rose from 26.2% in ’01 to 42.3% two decades later, in ’22.
Canada’s working-age population (aged 15 to 64 years) was also older than what it was 5 years back in ’21. 21.8% of individuals in this group were between the ages of 55 & 64.
The manufacturing sector was found to have experienced the largest increase in the share of workers aged 55 and older. This figure was as of 25 years back in ’01. It reflected that 9.8% of workers in that sector were in that age group.
4 years ago, by ’22, that number had risen to 24.2%. That reflected that, as of 4 years back in ’22, on average, nearly 1 in 4 manufacturing workers were aged 55 or older.
An associate professor in the department of management at the University of Guelph, Nita Chhinzer, said that it’s become less manual labour, besides being somewhat labour-intensive for a greater proportion of jobs than it was in the past.
Chhinzer added that it’s more of a symbiotic relationship with technology. It’s where technology’s easing some of the manual as well as physical demands of labour as well as manufacturing. This means that it may be pushing less on older bodies.
These findings coincide with prior StatsCan research that suggests that Canada’s overall population may be ageing. That’s with annual demographic estimates finding that over the past 2 decades, the average age in Canada has increased by more than 4 years. That’s from 37.5 in ’01 to 41.7, just two decades later.
