Benchmarks for assessing labour market health: 2025 update

This staff analytical note builds on Ens et al. (2021); Ens et al. (2022); Ens, See and Luu (2023); and Ens et al. (2024) to assess the health of the Canadian labour market. These earlier works established a framework for assessing the labour market given its diverse and segmented nature. This note includes the following: We provide an update on the state of the labour market, which has moved into modest excess supply since the 2024 update. We analyze two special topics that are important to understanding current and near-term labour market conditions: We perform an in-depth analysis to better understand how recent changes to US trade policy may affect different parts of the labour market. We explore the recent divergence of wage growth from other indicators and offer possible explanations for why wage growth remains above benchmark ranges despite the broader easing of the labour market. We update the range of benchmarks in our dashboard of indicators to ensure they remain relevant. To this end, we: add an additional year of data update the suite of wage indicators refine the calculation of the Hodrick-Prescott (HP) filter for wage growth measures