By Tom Parkin

June 6th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

Doug Ford’s $40M pre-election PR blitz gushed that things have never been better even while Ontario’s economy was eroding.

Ontario job growth turns negative

Employment positions, Ontario 2015-2025In March 2025, there were barely more jobs in Ontario than September 2023 as weak job growth throughout 2024 turned into 63,000 jobs lost since January.

Ontario’s steep job losses account for two-thirds of the 94,325 fewer jobs across Canada since January.

The data comes from Statistics Canada’s Survey of Employment (SEPH)

Youth unemployment hovers at the 20% level

The SEPH report echoes concerning data from StatsCan’s Labour Force Survey, which put April Ontario unemployment at 7.8 per cent, 8.6 per cent in Toronto.

For younger workers, joblessness rates are substantially higher.

Turns out, it was happening here. But not the way Ford said.

Through 2024, the incumbent PC Party government was spending over $40 million in public money on an advertising campaign, talking in glowing terms about never-better job numbers and affordable living costs, summing it all up in wondrous tones, telling Ontarians “it’s happening here”.

The PR blitz may have numbed voters enough to zombie-walk into another PC majority in Ontario’s February election.

But under the thin PR veneer, what was happening here was a failing EV manufacturing strategy, a crisis in the colleges sector, chaos in healthcare, a collapse in residential construction, and tapped-out consumers pulling-back, killing retail jobs.

Ford’s opponents hardly tried to break through the veneer, offered no strategy to fix the broken bits below it, and now have another 48 months to either whittle away in obscurity or decide to learn something from defeat. GDP data released earlier this month shows Ontario’s economy only grew 1.2 per cent in 2024, while GDP in the rest of the country came in at 1.8 per cent.

$40 million spent on advertising.

The job numbers from the first quarter suggest 2025 will be worse. As a result of weak economic activity and fewer taxpayers, Ontarians now face both higher deficits and more defunding of public services, as revealed in the recent provincial budget.

Education sector loses 17,500 jobs since January.

Among 18 economic sectors, 15 lost jobs with a massive 17,543 jobs disappearing in the education sector since January.StatsCan’s SEPH data doesn’t give detail about education sub-sectors, but many colleges are cutting staff, terminating programs and even closing campuses as they lose revenue from foreign students, who colleges had been explicitly encouraged to attract to replace the Ford government’s defunding.

Almost 15,000 retail and wholesale trade jobs disappeared since January, an ongoing reduction related to the pull-back by consumers affected by the cost of living crisis.

And almost 6,000 construction jobs have disappeared as residential construction utterly fails despite the deep need for more housing.