{"id":478955,"date":"2026-02-16T18:19:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T18:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/478955\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T18:19:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T18:19:13","slug":"ottawa-has-the-worst-job-market-in-canada-faring-worse-than-cities-with-tariff-hit-industries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/478955\/","title":{"rendered":"Ottawa has the worst job market in Canada, faring worse than cities with tariff-hit industries"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the moment President Donald Trump<\/a> returned to the White House promising to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States, Ontario and its factory-heavy economy seemed at risk.<\/p>\n

But while Ontario has experienced the weakest job market of any province over the past year, it\u2019s the Ottawa-Gatineau region that has suffered the steepest losses, faring much worse than cities closely associated with tariff<\/a>-hit industries such as steel and autos.<\/p>\n

And as federal cuts to spending and the civil service begin to ramp up, economists say the fallout in Canada\u2019s hardest-hit job market will only deepen.<\/p>\n

Last month, employment in Ottawa-Gatineau fell 3.5 per cent from the year before, a drop of roughly 32,000 jobs. <\/p>\n

For the Ontario side of the capital region alone, it was the fourth straight month in which annual job growth shrank by more than 5 per cent. This makes it the deepest slump outside of the early pandemic period since records began in 2011, including the drop that occurred in 2013 when the former Harper government slashed 15,000 federal civil-service jobs as part of its deficit-reduction plan.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

After last fall\u2019s budget, the federal government began sending out notices to public servants that their jobs may be cut as part of its work-force adjustment, a move to reduce federal employment by 40,000 from its peak in 2024 over five years. <\/p>\n

But those cuts are in their early stages, and some of the employment decline now under way stems from reductions planned under the previous Trudeau government.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe loss in employment we\u2019re seeing is front-running the larger number of layoffs that are still to come,\u201d said David Macdonald, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. <\/p>\n

Not all the losses in the region are the result of federal government pink slips. While federal employment in the national capital region declined in 2025 from the year before for the first time in more than a decade, it amounted to little more than 1,500 positions, or less than 1 per cent of federal bureaucrats who work in the region. <\/p>\n

Contractors and non-governmental organizations that rely on federal money are also cutting back, said Mr. Macdonald. <\/p>\n

Federal departments have identified more than 16,000 planned job cuts to date, database shows<\/a><\/p>\n

At the same time the uncertainty around job losses threatens to spill into other sectors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are the people getting layoff notices, the people being told they might get laid off, and then there\u2019s everybody else watching from the sidelines wondering if they\u2019ll be next,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re going to be a lot more nervous about making big purchases or even going out to lunch to eat.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a sharp reversal for a city that benefited from a rapidly expanding federal work force throughout the pandemic. <\/p>\n

\u201cOttawa has been in this government bubble where the other sectors didn\u2019t really get as heavily impacted because the economy stayed reliable based on those guaranteed government jobs, and now that bubble is bursting,\u201d said Alita Fabiano, director of communications with LRO Staffing, an employment agency.<\/p>\n

The staffing company has received an increased number of r\u00e9sum\u00e9s from people currently working in the federal government, but she said most workers are still waiting until there\u2019s a final decision made by government departments about who will be laid off.<\/p>\n

For the first time since the pandemic began, the Ottawa region\u2019s private sector is carrying what job growth the city is experiencing, with public-sector employment in January back to where it was six years earlier.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know public administration grew significantly over the last few years so there was going to be some right-sizing, but it\u2019s been a confidence shake in the market because of the size of what the federal government has intended,\u201d said Sueling Ching, the president and chief executive officer of the Ottawa Board of Trade.<\/p>\n

While she still sees the city\u2019s tech industry as a contender to absorb some of the federal workers who lose their jobs, she said a bigger opportunity may reside in the federal government\u2019s increased defence spending. <\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a limit to how much defence-related hiring can make up for the wave of layoffs set to hit the region this year, said Mr. Macdonald. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From the moment President Donald Trump returned to the White House promising to bring manufacturing jobs back to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,45,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-478955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}