Canada’s unemployment rate stood at 6.5% in September 2026 after rising 0.1 percentage point from August, with a year-to-date peak of 6.9% in April—levels well below the 7.04% annual average recorded in 2016 and far short of the double-digit spike during the 2020 pandemic. Recent job losses, concentrated in education, health care, and manufacturing amid tighter immigration rules and U.S. tariffs, have weighed on the labor market, yet employment remains modestly higher than a year earlier and the rate has stayed range-bound near early-2026 levels. Traders assign an implied 90.8% probability to “No” because current readings and the modest pace of deterioration make a new post-2016 high unlikely before year-end. A sharper contraction in the final months or a significant upward revision to prior data could still alter that assessment ahead of the November 6 release.