Unemployment rate실업률

What is it?

The unemployment rate (실업률) is the percentage of the labour force who are unemployed. The labour force is everyone aged 15 and older who either has a job or is looking for one.

Unemployed people are those who, in the survey week, had no work, were able to start work, and were one of these: on temporary layoff, had looked for work in the past 4 weeks, or had a job set to start within the next 4 weeks.

The math is the number unemployed ÷ the labour force × 100. For example, in October 2026 the Toronto census metropolitan area (Toronto CMA) had 303,500 unemployed people and a labour force of 4,107,800, so its unemployment rate was 7.4%.

Similar terms and how they differ

• Employment rate: the share of all people aged 15 and older who have a job. Students and retirees who are not looking for work are counted in the total. In October 2026 it was 60.5% in Canada.
• Participation rate: the share of people aged 15 and older who are in the labour force (working or looking for work). In October 2026 it was 67.4% in the Toronto CMA.
• The unemployment rate does not count people who are not looking for work. So it can fall when more people give up looking, and it can rise when more people start looking, even if the number of jobs stays the same. Looking at all three numbers together gives a clearer picture.

What to know when you read the numbers

• It comes from a sample survey. It is an estimate based on about 65,000 households each month, so it has a margin of error. The smaller the area, such as the Toronto CMA, the bigger the error (standard error of the month-to-month change in Table 8, October 2026: 0.4 pts).
• It is usually seasonally adjusted. The usual changes of the year (such as summer jobs) are taken out, so you can compare this month with last month directly.
• It gets revised. Statistics Canada revises the seasonally adjusted figures for the previous 3 years around the end of each January. For past numbers, check which release they come from.
• Countries measure it a little differently. Statistics Canada points to a past study that found the Canadian rate is about 1 point lower when measured the U.S. way.

Example: unemployment rate in October (first release each year, seasonally adjusted)

Figures as first published in Statistics Canada’s The Daily, in each year’s October Labour Force Survey release (2024-11-08, 2025-11-07, 2026-11-06) and its Table 8. They may differ a little from later revised figures.

What it means for buyers

• The unemployment rate is an average for an area. Banks and mortgage lenders decide your loan from your own income and job papers, not from this number.
• When the rate rises, more households may worry about losing a job. If you plan to buy, it is safer to work out your monthly payment at the stress-test rate and keep a few months of living costs as an emergency fund (opinion).
• Rate decisions look at many kinds of data besides jobs, such as prices. The unemployment rate alone cannot tell you whether rates will go up or down (opinion).