Opportunities of working remotely in rural labour markets: Small area estimation from the Canadian Survey on Business Conditions, third and fourth quarters of 2025
Released: 2026-05-01
New data on remote work opportunities in rural labour markets are derived from the Canadian Survey on Business Conditions (CSBC) for the third and fourth quarters of 2025. Estimates are available for all rural labour markets across Canada by general industrial sector (goods or services).
The data are based on self-contained labour areas (SLAs), a geographic concept that defines rural functional areas based on commuting flows using the 2021 Census of Population. Small area estimation (SAE) methods are applied to produce reliable estimates at this level of geographic detail.
For each reference period, 483 SLAs are included. SLAs are combined with the general industrial sectors to form SAE domains, with estimates available for 476 goods-producing and 479 services-producing domains.
As the CSBC excludes the public administration sector from its target population, these estimates reflect trends in the private sector only, and differences in remote work patterns may reflect varying workplace policies across sectors.
Remote work arrangements of services-producing businesses in rural labour markets increase in the fourth quarter
Private sector businesses generally report having flexible remote work arrangements aligned with their respective industry needs. In the fourth quarter of 2025, based on the median estimated percentage, over one-quarter (26.6%) of services-producing businesses within SLAs expected to offer remote work arrangements, up 8.5% from the same quarter in 2024 (Chart 1).
Among services-producing businesses in 152 urban labour markets (i.e., census metropolitan areas and census agglomerations), median year-over-year estimates for expected remote work opportunities declined from the second quarter of 2024 to the first quarter of 2025, before increasing from the second to fourth quarters of 2025 (Chart 1).
Chart 1
Year-over-year change in the median share of services-producing businesses offering remote work arrangements, self-contained labour areas and urban labour markets
Remote work expectations of services-producing businesses in rural labour markets vary across provinces and territories
From the fourth quarter of 2024 to the fourth quarter of 2025, Prince Edward Island (+67.7%) recorded the largest increase in the median estimate of services-producing businesses within SLAs that expected to offer remote work arrangements, followed by Newfoundland and Labrador (+41.7%) and Quebec (+18.3%) (Chart 2). By contrast, the largest year-over-year decline was in Yukon (-62.5%), followed by Nunavut (-9.6%) and Manitoba (-8.0%).
Chart 2
Year-over-year change in median share of services-producing businesses offering remote work arrangements within self-contained labour areas, by province or territory, fourth quarter of 2024 to fourth quarter of 2025
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Note to readers
This release expands on the Canadian Survey on Business Conditions (CSBC) data analysis by providing detailed estimates for rural areas. It combines small area estimation (SAE) techniques with the geographic concept of self-contained labour areas (SLAs) to examine remote work opportunities in rural labour markets (also known as rural functional areas). This is the final release of these estimates, as survey questions on remote work arrangements were discontinued from the CSBC beginning in the first quarter of 2026.
SAE methods are statistical techniques used to produce reliable estimates for small areas, such as neighbourhoods or rural areas, where sample sizes are typically too small to generate reliable estimates. They combine survey data with auxiliary data from other data sources to build a statistical model and estimate population characteristics for a small area.
SLAs define rural functional areas based on commuting flows and include all Canadian municipalities outside census metropolitan areas and census agglomerations. Each SLA consists of a self-contained grouping of areas where the majority of residents both work and live. SLAs are delineated using census subdivisions as building blocks, based on Census of Population data.
For this analysis, sample data are drawn from the CSBC and supplemented with data from the Generic Survey Universe File derived from Statistics Canada's Business Register and the 2021 Census of Population. The SAE model estimates the proportion of services-producing businesses and goods-producing businesses (according to the Variant of NAICS 2017 Version 3.0 – Goods and services producing industries) within SLAs that expect to offer remote work arrangements over the three months following the reference quarter.
For more information on the methods used, refer to the Statistics Canada Reports on Special Business Projects report, "Enhancing data for rural Canada: Small area estimation of remote work opportunities," and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report, "Delineating Functional Areas in All Territories."
Products
The product "Rural Data Viewer," part of Statistics Canada - Data Visualization Products (71-607-X), is now available. The complete dataset is available upon request.
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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