A hiring boom across Alberta and Ontario health-care systems has been singlehandedly propping up Canada’s national job market — but that growth may say more about the sluggish state of the rest of the economy than about improving patient outcomes.
A report from Desjardins Group looking at Statistics Canada jobs data shows the two provinces have collectively added over 100,000 health-care jobs, mainly in public institutions, since the early days of the U.S. trade war, a trend consistent with increased funding for the sector set aside in those provinces’ budgets.
Desjardins’ analysis of provincial budget documents shows Alberta and Ontario each planned to spend upwards of $8 billion more on health in 2026 than 2025. Ontario budgeted $91.5 billion for health last year while Alberta budgeted $24 billion.
Without that hiring, Canada’s employment picture “would have been broadly flat,” the report’s author, Desjardins deputy chief economist Randall Bartlett, told CBC News — which he said means claims of a robust Canadian economy are “a little misguided.”
Labour Force Survey data shows that since March 2025, there were nearly 133,000 jobs added nationwide in the health-care and social assistance sector — with hiring “most pronounced in hospitals and services for the elderly,” the report notes — more than the 118,000 jobs added in all other sectors combined.
