Monthly estimates of business openings and closures, March 2025
Released: 2025-06-26
In March, the business opening rate was 4.8% for a third straight month. The closure rate edged up 0.1 percentage points to 4.8%, following two consecutive monthly declines of 0.2 percentage points. In March, the business opening rate was 0.1 percentage point above its 2015-to-2019 historical average while the closure rate was 0.2 percentage points higher than its historical average.
The number of active businesses showed no growth over the first quarter of 2025. In March, the number of active businesses dropped by 0.1% (-722 businesses) as the number of business closures was higher than that of openings. In the same month, payroll employment dropped by 0.3%, real gross domestic product edged up 0.1% and business insolvency filings were relatively unchanged from February (448) to March (444).
Business openings held relatively steady in most sectors in March. The construction (+409 business openings compared with February) sector recorded the largest variation in business openings, followed by the accommodation and food services (-194) and other services (except public administration) (-89) sectors.
In March, business closures changed little in most sectors. The finance and insurance, and management of companies and enterprises (+104 business closures compared with February) and health care and social assistance (+90) sectors posted the largest increases in business closures. These increases were partially offset by the decline in closures in the retail trade (-110) sector.
The number of active businesses dropped or was relatively unchanged in all sectors in March. The decline in the overall number of active businesses was mainly driven by the transportation and warehousing (37.7% contribution to the decline in active businesses), professional, scientific and technical services (24.3% contribution) and accommodation and food services (8.0% contribution) sectors.
Chart 1
Monthly business openings and closures as a percentage of active businesses, business sector, January 2023 to March 2025, seasonally adjusted data
Chart 2
Percent contribution of sectors to the decline in the number of active businesses, February to March 2025, seasonally adjusted data
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Note to readers
With each release, data for the preceding month are revised as additional information becomes available. This may also involve minor revisions to historical data due to seasonal adjustment. Users are encouraged to use the most up-to-date data available for each month.
Seasonal adjustment is applied separately to each sector to account for unique patterns, which can lead to discrepancies between business sector figures and the sum of sector-specific ones.
Percentages in Chart 2 represent the contribution of each sector to the business sector's overall variation. The percentage is negative when the direction of the sector's variation is different from that of the overall variation, and it's positive when sectoral and overall variation are in the same direction.
More precisely, a sector's contribution is negative if it shows a decrease in the number of businesses, while the total number of businesses has increased. Similarly, a sector's contribution is negative if it shows an increase in the number of businesses, while the total number of businesses has fallen.
For more information on the data presented in this release, see the Monthly Business Openings and Closures (5401) survey page.
Contact information
For more information, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact us (toll-free 1-800-263-1136; 514-283-8300; infostats@statcan.gc.ca) or Media Relations (statcan.mediahotline-ligneinfomedias.statcan@statcan.gc.ca).
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