In 2025, the labour force participation rate for Canadian workers aged 65 years and older was 15.2%, the fifth consecutive annual increase. This represents nearly 1.2 million seniors who were either employed or searching for work in 2025, or 5.2% of the total labour force.
As the number of people aged 65 years and older continues to grow—driven by the large baby boom cohort—a higher proportion of them than ever before are still participating in the labour force.
The participation rate in 2025 is also the largest on record for that age group since the Labour Force Survey (LFS) started tracking it in 1976. This rate grew steadily from 2000, when 6.0% of persons over 65 years were participating in the labour force, to 14.9% in 2019. Following a sharp decline in 2020 associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, the participation rate of seniors now exceeds pre-pandemic levels.
So, what types of jobs were older Canadians doing, and why were so many of them working? Let’s look at other annual LFS data and analyses for some answers.
In 2025, two in five employed seniors worked part-time, most of them doing so by choice
Roughly two in five employed Canadians aged 65 years and older (41.6%) worked part-time in 2025. Of them, four in five people (79.9%) cited it was personal preference, the most common reason given in all years when asked.
Other older workers cited personal or family responsibilities (5.2%), their own illness (4.9%) and other voluntary reasons (4.3%) for choosing part-time work. Smaller proportions said it was because they could not find full-time work or didn’t look for it in the month before being surveyed.
Part-time workers aged 65 years and older worked an average of 16.2 hours per week in 2025, regardless of whether they had one or more jobs.
Thousands of seniors work multiple jobs
A considerable number of older workers punched more than one clock in 2025: 43,500 workers aged 65 years and older worked multiple jobs that year.
About 9 in 10 of these people (90.1%) worked in services-producing sectors as their main job, most commonly in health care and social assistance, followed by wholesale and retail trade, and professional, scientific and technical services.
Average retirement age is over 65 years
One possible contribution to the increase in labour force participation among seniors? The average retirement age for all workers reached a record high in 2025, at 65.4 years. It was lower for public sector employees (62.6 years) but higher for those in the private sector (66.0) and those who were self-employed (68.4), differences that are typical in every year.
The average retirement age declined steadily from 64.6 years in 1976 (when the LFS started tracking these data) to an all-time low of 60.9 years in 1997, before the trend reversed.
When asked in 2025, 198,000 persons aged 65 years and older left their job during the previous year and were no longer in the labour force, of which 169,000 (85.3%) retired. These numbers have grown sharply in recent years; in 2025, 24.3% more seniors reported retiring in the past year and no longer being in the labour force compared with 2023.
Why do older workers keep working?
Other StatCan data and analyses show that a considerable number of older Canadians are food insecure and live under the poverty line, which may help explain why some continue working longer.
In 2023, almost one in eight Canadians aged 65 years and older (12.6%) reported experiencing some form of food insecurity. In this age group, the poverty rate (5.0%) and the proportion of people in low income (13.8%) both decreased slightly from 2022.
In the spring of 2025, the Canadian Social Survey found that nearly one in four Canadians (24.1%) reported it being easy or very easy for their household to meet its financial needs, down from nearly one in two Canadians (47.7%) in the summer of 2021.
Among households in which the main income earner was 65 years and older in the fourth quarter of 2025, the average liabilities per household was $56,842. driven upward over the previous year (+4.5%) by an increase in mortgage liabilities and other liabilities, such as credit cards. This outpaced, by a slim margin, the increase in average household value of assets over the same period (+3.8%).
Another StatCan analysis using LFS data found that just over one in five seniors aged 65 to 74 years (21%) worked in 2022, and almost half of them did so by necessity.
Contact information
For more information, contact the Statistical Information Service (toll-free 1-800-263-1136; 514-283-8300; infostats@statcan.gc.ca) or Media Relations (statcan.mediahotline-ligneinfomedias.statcan@statcan.gc.ca).