Health

Health-care hiring has propped up Canada’s job market. Will patients see a difference?

Ontario and Alberta have added over 100,000 jobs following new budget commitments

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.

That concentrated hiring shows Alberta and Ontario following through on policies to increase spending "in the hope of expanding and supporting public health care," Bartlett said, with the end goal ideally playing out as tangible improvements to the system.

Whether that happens is another matter, however, with economists and health policy experts noting that more spending and job growth in health care don't automatically lead to better services for patients.

"It's really important to remember that just because a job is in the health-care sector, it does not mean that it's a job that's touching patients," said Fiona Clement, director of the Centre for Health Policy at the University of Calgary's Cummings School of Medicine.

Canada adds 75K jobs as economy rebounds from weak start to the year

Ontario seeks to connect 600,000 more people to primary care

In Alberta, where the government restructured its previous health authority into four separate agencies, "the entire support infrastructure of a ministry has to be replicated three more times," Clement said.

"Thinking about it at that level, it makes a lot of sense to me that there has been growth in that workforce."

There's less evidence that the new jobs have been in front-line patient care, Clement said, noting that College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta data shows "there has not been meaningful growth in the number of physicians in the province."

Alberta premier insists dual practice health care won't threaten public system

Some of the increased labour spending in Alberta and Ontario could merely be making up for slower hiring in the past, Bartlett noted — and some of the money will be going to wage increases for existing workers.

The provinces may also be preparing for demographic shifts on the horizon, said Livio Di Matteo, a professor of economics at Lakehead University who specializes in health economics and public policy.

"Large numbers of physicians are expected to retire over the next five years, as well as nurses and other types of health professionals," he said. "That's probably already starting up, which explains why there might be additional hiring or higher amounts of hiring."

Spending growth on its own, furthermore, is unremarkable, the experts said.

Government spending on health care generally increases over time because demand increases as populations grow, said Sara Allin, an associate professor of health policy at the University of Toronto and the director of the North American Observatory on Health Systems and Policies.

"We rarely see a real decline in spending. It tends to go up, often at a higher rate than economic growth," she said.

"Given that, we're going to expect more people to be hired."

How that plays out in province-wide networks can be quite complex, Allin noted, with regional populations evolving, services sometimes varying along rural-urban divides and some hospitals expanding while others face cuts.

"All these things can be true," she said. "It depends on where people are being hired, which hospitals facing deficits may be laying off, while others experiencing growth are hiring. It depends on the region and the capacity of the hospital to weather these financial pressures."

The population growth factor also means the health-care spending boom may not be as significant as it seems, said Di Matteo.

Data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information in 2025 shows that, with population growth and inflation factored in, spending growth per person in Alberta was around 0.3 per cent. In Ontario, it hovered around zero — "basically flat," he said.

Extrapolating recent population trends — the latest Statistics Canada data shows Ontario's population has declined for three straight quarters, while Alberta's has edged up — suggests Ontario's spending growth on a real per capita basis "should be growing," Bartlett said, and Alberta's would likely be "muted."

Rising per capita spending growth isn't a sure sign of an improving system, Clement said — and a drop in spending isn't necessarily bad.

"If you can spend less money per capita and get better outcomes, that means you're designing a system that is getting better value than before."

'No reason to think this will reverse'

Desjardins sees the hiring trend remaining strong "for the foreseeable future."

Both Alberta and Ontario have budgeted additional health-care spending "over the next couple of years," Desjardins' report says. With various factors likely to increase costs, and an aging population key among them, "there is no reason to think this will reverse."

Millions of Canadians struggle to get specialist health care: StatsCan report

Canada's oldest age group is also its fastest-growing

Alberta projects annual health-care spending growth of around four to five per cent, the report says, a range that "may be similarly realistic for other Canadian provinces given the ongoing demands on provincial health care systems."

New report suggests doctors haven't been freed up by virtual health care

Ultimately, Bartlett says, taxpayers won't measure the success of this hiring spree by headline job numbers, but by what happens when they actually seek care.

"When it comes to any public policy, what really matters to Canadians and taxpayers more broadly is that they see results for that public spending," he said.

"When you look at the hiring in the provinces that have increased spending the most, if that starts translating into better health-care outcomes … that should send a more positive signal to Canadians that some of the spending is going in the right direction."