Why Windsor-Essex, Ont., still has Canada's highest jobless rate as population approaches 500,000

Justin Falconer closely follows numbers related to employment in southwestern Ontario and beyond.

He's the CEO for Workforce WindsorEssex — a non-profit organization focused on jobs and community planning and development.

Falconer believes the region is poised to surpass a population level of 500,000 after big growth estimates were shown last year, according to Statistics Canada.

"In 2023, we added nearly 32,000 people to the Windsor-Essex area, and it looks like 2024 is probably going to outpace that growth," he said.

The population in Windsor-Essex was estimated at a shade over 468,000 in 2023.

Falconer is basing his forecast for the year on monthly labour force survey results. However, official numbers won't be known until they're released in July 2025, with early population estimates announced in mid-January.

"Of course, it's not over yet. But based on early estimates … we're already seeing labour force working-age population grow again — 15 years and older grow [by] 13,400 people."

Last year, for comparison's sake, Falconer says the same labour force number only grew by 10,000 — while the region's overall population increased by three times that number — roughly 30,000.

"Then this year I'm seeing 13,000 labour force population growth in the first 11 months. We're probably going to see another 30,000 [population growth], maybe even higher growth entirely, unless these sort of multipliers end up being wrong. But I think we'll be knocking on 500,000 people."

Falconer says Windsor-Essex is seeing a record number of 196,300 people working. He calls it an "all-time" high for the area.

"Everyone's benefiting from that. Municipalities are benefiting from more people paying property tax and coming to the area, and the businesses."

The spinoff of the NextStar electric vehicle battery factory has been a big driver in the job gains and population growth, according to Falconer. 

International movement driving population surge

Sébastien Lavoie agrees with Falconer's assessment of possibly seeing a second consecutive year of big population growth in Windsor-Essex.

The senior analyst with Statistics Canada says the main driver continues to be international migration into urban centres.

"We have a good idea, like high level, mid-2024 trends are similar to what we're seeing before," said Lavoie. 

"It wouldn't be unreasonable to expect by the time we release the official population estimates next month that it would be in the vicinity of 500,000."

There were two to three times more new non-permanent residents in Windsor-Essex in 2023 compared to settled immigrants, according to Lavoie.

"If you bring in a lot more, you bring in more people than your job creation can absorb, then you can imagine that that will have an impact in bringing the unemployment rate higher, that's for sure."

The federal Liberals have stated they plan to stabilize population growth across the country in a new plan introduced in October — along with word of two possible recent immigration policy changes in response to U.S. tariff threats.

High unemployment unchanged

Despite the number of people working in the region, Windsor continues to sit atop the country's unemployment rate list for bigger cities.

November numbers released by Statistics Canada put the border city at 8.7 per cent, down from 8.8 per cent the previous month.

Nationally, the jobless rate rose 0.3 percentage points to 6.8, with more people searching for work last month.

The government's unemployment rate comes with a 2 per cent margin of error on the survey's numbers, according to Windsor-based researcher Frazier Fathers.

He also warns there's a risk with any one month of data that sits in isolation as it relates to job numbers — and that the participation rate for Windsor has historically been lower than the national average.

Aside from more people moving here, Fathers says the number of specialized jobs companies are looking to fill can also pose a problem.

"The battery plant needing to bring in some external expertise, which kind of occurs on big projects like this and on the Gordie Howe bridge," he said. 

"Not everyone's willing to work 200 metres up in the air on top of that bridge tower."

"Windsor for a long time has had a sort of challenge of people without jobs — and jobs without people. There's been labour force disconnects in our community for a long time."

Another gap in the employment survey data, according to Fathers, is that they don't capture positions such as temporary farm workers.

"Despite there being net new jobs, there's been net migration to the community. The population has been growing. It just means that there are more people looking in the unemployment rate, and the fact that the participation rate is up means that there's people actively looking, not necessarily that there's high unemployment and that people have given up."

Falconer says the jobless rate continues to stay high because there's also evidence more people are rejoining the labour force for reasons such as cost-of-living pressures or the need for a second household income.

"We have both growing population, and we have some of our folks who were previously not looking, not working, re-entering the labour force, creating a stubbornly high unemployment rate." 

Falconer thinks there will be enough movement within the local labour force in 2025 to create vacancies and bring the jobless number down.

"There's lots of evidence that suggests that Windsor-Essex is probably going to benefit from this because the transition from traditional combustion engines to EV is going to take longer, which means our supply chain or tool and die and all these sectors around us have that much longer to pivot."

Falconer says aside from keeping the city's number one employer, Stellantis, firing on all cylinders — the region's biggest sectors for job growth are public administration, finance, insurance and real estate.