Employment in the Greater Golden Horseshoe

In 2016, there were almost 4.6 million workers living in the GGH, an increase of more than 400,000 workers since 2006. Of these, 3.7 million had a usual place of work. Others either worked at home, had a job that did not have a usual place of work, or worked outside Canada. Those with no fixed workplace increased substantially - by more than 110,000 jobs, an increase of nearly 27 percent. The share of GGH residents who had a usual place of work declined slightly from 2006 to 2016 - from 83 percent to 81 percent of workers (see Table 4).[1]

Table 4: Employment by place of work status, GGH, 2006 and 2016

Based on Place of Residence

Based on Place of Work

2006

2016

Change

(2006-2016)

2006

2016

Change

(2006-2016)

(%)

(%)

Worked at usual place

3,428,445

3,700,695

272,250

7.9

3,437,935

3,710,915

272,980

7.9

Worked at home

286,495

334,000

47,505

16.6

285,220

334,090

48,870

17.1

No fixed workplace

415,530

526,390

110,860

26.7

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

Worked outside Canada

21,525

25,910

4,385

20.4

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

Total

4,152,125

4,586,990

434,865

10.5

3,723,105

4,045,055

321,950

8.6

n.a. = not applicable

In analysing where jobs are located in the GGH, and how the nature and geography of employment is changing, we rely on Place of Work data - in which jobs are counted based on the location of the job, not on where the worker lives (unlike, for example, the Labour Force Survey). With Place of Work data, we can map only those jobs that have a distinct physical location, that is, a usual place of work (office, shop, factory, etc.), or for workers whose home is their workplace.

Based on these data, Table 4 shows that there were more than 4 million jobs within the Greater Golden Horseshoe in 2016. More than 3.7 million of these jobs had a usual place of work, and more than 300,000 were located in a home.

The number of jobs within the GGH with a usual place of work or at home increased by 322,000 between 2006 and 2016, a rise of 8.6 percent.

All GGH job figures referred to and mapped in this report pertain to jobs with a usual place of work outside the home, unless otherwise noted.


[1] All employment data in this report are for the employed labour force, aged 15 years and over.