Federal government employment in census metropolitan areas

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There were approximately 377,700 federal government employees in September 2006, with three-quarters of them working in a metropolitan area. Across the country, federal government workers accounted for about 2.5% of the labour force employed within census metropolitan areas.

Of the total federal government employees across the country, 31.2% were within the Ottawa–Gatineau metropolitan area. This continues the upward trend from 25.7% in September 1990 when this series was first initiated.

On the other hand, the federal government represented 18.2% of total employment in the Ottawa–Gatineau area, down from the peak of 21.9% in September 1992.

Halifax had the second highest proportion of federal public servants at 8.0% of total employment as of September. Other proportions ranged from 5.5% in Kingston to 0.2% in Oshawa.

Note: Data for this release are based on the 2001 Standard Geographical Classification census metropolitan area definition. Data for smaller areas such as census agglomerations have not been developed due to the unavailability of detailed information. The term federal government presented in this release includes all organizations controlled by the federal government that are not-for-profit and perform non-commercial services on behalf of the government and its citizens. The count of federal government employees includes the Canadian military (regular forces and reservists), as well as uniformed Royal Canadian Mounted Police members. However, these statistics do not include employees of federal government business enterprises that operate as commercial corporations in the marketplace.

Caution should be used when comparing these federal government employment statistics to federal government public administration on the North American Industry Classification System basis, the latter being a sub-set of the former.

The Federal Government Employment and Payroll Program uses a census data collection approach, which means that all federal government entities are covered in the statistics. However, details by metropolitan area are not always available. To fulfill the numerous requests for regional information, imputation methods have been developed and complementary information has been collected in order to produce employment statistics for 2001 Census-defined metropolitan areas.

Available on CANSIM: table 183-0003.

Definitions, data sources and methods: survey number 1713.

Data tables on public sector employment are also available online in the Summary tables module of our website.

For general information or to order data, contact Jo-Anne Thibault (613-951-0767; jo-anne.thibault@statcan.gc.ca). To enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact Claude Bilodeau (613-951-1816; claude.bilodeau@statcan.gc.ca), Public Institutions Division.