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Public sector employment in Ontario is far lower than in the rest of Canada. But change is happening.

Ontario public sector employment is lower than across Canada:  For years, public sector employment as a portion of total employment has been consistently lower in Ontario.   In 2012, public sector employment was 19.3% of all employment in Ontario and 20.1% in Canada, a gap of 0.8%.   By 2017, the gap grew to 1.4% as Ontario public sector employment fell to 18.7% while it remained at 20.1% in Canada.  


The gap had grown further by the first ten months of 2022 -- to 1.8%.  

But at least public sector employment as a proportion of jobs in Ontario grew to 20%. That increase added about an extra 160,000 public sector jobs.  But Ontario would have over 100,000 more public sector jobs if public sector jobs were the same proportion of the workforce as in Canada -- and 50,000 more if we had at least maintained the same gap with Canada as in 2012.    

Ontario has a relatively small public sector workforce -- despite having the nation's capital within its borders.  

Public sector employment in Ontario was stagnant from 2012 through 2017, the years of  Ontario Liberal austerity. 

Public sector job growth began again in the months leading up to the 2018 provincial election.  These gains deepend after the 2018 election of Doug Ford and the PCs, despite a brief downturn during the COVID lockdown.   

As a result, we have 22% more public sector employees in October 2022 compared with January 2012, almost 1.6 million versus almost 1.3 million. Practically all of that increase was achieved after 2017.  This increase in public sector employment is almost twice the 12% growth in population over the 2012-2022 period, despite the stagnation over 2012-17.  

Why is public sector empoyment increasing recently?  At first glance, one might think that health care might account for the increase in public sector employment, given COVID and long-COVID health issues.  But, in Ontario at least, health care employment (in all three sub-sectors -- hospitals, nursing and resdential care, and ambulatory care) has not increased very much since the election of the Ford government, despite COVID.  

Deepening the mystery, the change towards more public sector employment occurred despite the hostility of the Ford government to the public sector. (The large majority of public sector workers in Ontario are primarily funded by the provincial government - about 1.2 million out of 1.6 million).  

Notably, increasing public sector employment occurred in both Ontario and Canada and spending across all levels of government in Canada in 2021 was 21% higher than it was pre-pandemic in 2019 (despite a 7.8% decline in total spending in 2021 from 2020 levels as COVID spending declined). So this increase reflects some other basic changes in the needs of Canadian capitalism. Certainly problems arising from COVID, years of Liberal austerity, rising inflation, the further slowdown in captalist growth, and a rising China have deepened the crisis and occasioned some changes. 

 

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