Labour Market Shifts in AI-Exposed Occupations and Early-Career Employment Stagnation

Statistics Canada reported in September 2024 that 31% of Canadian workers hold jobs with high exposure to AI and low complementarity — meaning the tasks involved overlap substantially with current AI capabilities — while a further 29% are in roles with high exposure but high complementarity, where AI is more likely to augment than replace workers (StatCan, 2024).

StatCan's January 2026 analysis of employment trends since the launch of ChatGPT found that in coding-intensive professions, employment among workers aged 15–29 was flat from November 2022 to December 2025, while employment among workers aged 30–49 grew nearly 30%. This age-stratified divergence became statistically significant in late 2024. However, the same analysis found no statistically significant difference between AI-exposed and non-AI-exposed industries at the aggregate level — the divergence appears concentrated in specific occupations and age cohorts (StatCan, 2026). The Indeed Hiring Lab reported that junior and standard tech role postings in Canada were down 25% from pre-pandemic levels, while senior and manager postings remained up 5% (Indeed, 2025).

Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem stated in late 2025 that AI is reducing the number of entry-level jobs and could "end up destroying more jobs than it creates," citing falling job-finding rates in AI-exposed roles (Global News, 2025).

Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke issued a company-wide directive in April 2025 requiring teams to demonstrate why a job cannot be done by AI before requesting additional headcount (CNBC, 2025). Telus and Bell Canada announced workforce reductions citing AI and digital transformation (documented as separate incident records). The federal government's Budget 2025 states that "AI and process automation will be leveraged" in reducing the public service by 40,000 positions by 2028–29 (CBC, 2025).

A Dais/Future Skills Centre study found that 74% of public sector workers are in AI-exposed occupations (versus 56% overall), with 58% of federal public service workers in roles with high exposure and low complementarity (Dais/FSC, 2025).

An IRPP analysis noted that Employment Insurance coverage declined from 87% of unemployed workers in 1976 to 38% in 2019, and that severance laws are fragmented across jurisdictions. The Canadian Labour Congress stated that Canadian AI policy is "really being focused primarily on the priority of stimulating the industry in Canada... with almost no attention to the impact on work and preparing workers" (IRPP, 2026).

Whether AI will follow the pattern of previous technology transitions — with complementarity effects and new job categories emerging as the technology matures — remains an open question. The evidence on AI's net employment impact is early-stage, and the causal relationship between AI adoption and the observed employment patterns has not been established (IASR, 2026).