Employment rates, by sex and Aboriginal identity

Employment and unemployment rates have improved among the Aboriginal population

• While the employment rate for Aboriginal people is relatively low, it has improved at a faster pace than the non-Aboriginal rate. Employment rates among Aboriginal people aged 15 years and over increased 5.3 percentage points between the last two censuses, reaching 49.7% in 2001. This jump was more than twice the 2.6-point gain for non-Aboriginal people of the same age, whose employment rate was 61.8% in 2001. The differences in employment rates among Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people were less pronounced among women and people aged 55 and over.
• Similarly, the unemployment rate among Aboriginal people aged 15 years and over is high (almost three times higher than the non-Aboriginal rate), but dropped more than the rate for non-Aboriginal people. The Aboriginal unemployment rate fell from 24.0% in 1996 to 19.1% in 2001; this decline of 4.9 percentage points was much larger than the drop of 2.7 percentage points for the non-Aboriginal population, whose rate was 7.1% in 2001.
• Among Aboriginal groups, the Métis had the highest employment rate (59.4%) in 2001, compared with 48.6% for the Inuit and 44.6% for the North American Indians. A higher proportion of Métis than of the other two Aboriginal groups had graduated from high school or completed postsecondary studies.

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