Monthly estimates of business openings and closures, January 2026
Released: 2026-04-29
In January, the business closure rate edged up 0.1 percentage points to 5.0%, after settling at 4.9% over the previous three months. The closure rate was 0.4 percentage points above its 2015-to-2019 historical average in January. The opening rate held steady at 4.9% for a second consecutive month, remaining at 0.2 percentage points above its historical average. In January 2026, both the entry (1.6%) and the reopening (3.3%) rates were unchanged from the previous month. The business opening rate was relatively unchanged from December 2025 to January 2026 across all sectors.
The number of active businesses dropped by 0.2% (-1,584 businesses) in January as the number of business closures was higher than that of openings. In the same month, payroll employment increased by 0.2%, real gross domestic product edged up 0.1% and business insolvency filings rose by 8.9%, from 336 in December 2025 to 366 in January 2026.
The number of active businesses dropped or changed little in all sectors in January. The decrease in the overall number of active businesses was driven by professional, scientific and technical services (-295 businesses compared with December, making a 19.4% contribution to the decline in the overall number of active businesses). It was followed by construction (-244 businesses; 16.1% contribution), retail trade (-240 businesses; 15.8% contribution) and transportation and warehousing (-221 businesses; 14.6% contribution).
The change in the overall number of business closures in January was led by transportation and warehousing (+292 business closures compared with December, making a 32.1% contribution to the increase in the overall number of closures). It was followed by retail trade (+205 closures; 22.6% contribution), professional, scientific and technical services (+180 closures; 19.8% contribution) and other services (except public administration) (+96 closures; 10.6% contribution). The number of business closures changed little in the other sectors.
Chart 1
Monthly business openings and closures as a percentage of active businesses, business sector, January 2024 to January 2026, seasonally adjusted data
Chart 2
Percent contribution of sectors to the change in the number of active businesses, December 2025 to January 2026, seasonally adjusted data
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 active businesses, while the total number of active businesses has increased. Similarly, a sector's contribution is negative if it shows an increase in active businesses, while the total number of active 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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