Fewer employees with disabilities secure paid leave as job tenure and employment rates decline
Staying in a job for a shorter period of time can carry significant risks for employees, including reduced access to vacation leave and growing wage gaps—trends that are especially pronounced for Canadians with disabilities, as reported by Statistics Canada.
According to the latest Labour Force Survey (LFS), in 2024, less than half (49.3 percent) of employees with a job tenure of less than one year had access to vacation leave, which is 23.6 percentage points lower than the national average.
Permanent employees (78 percent) were much more likely than non-permanent employees (32 percent) to have access to paid vacation leave, with management and natural and applied sciences occupations seeing the highest rates of entitlement.
These findings underscore the importance of stable employment for workforce well-being and benefit access, especially for those with disabilities.
As per Statistics Canada, the average job tenure across all industries declined from 103.2 months in 2014 to 100.3 months in 2024, with most industries and occupational categories experiencing either a decline or little change, even in traditionally stable sectors.
Factors such as age, immigration status, and the presence of a disability play a significant role in how long employees remain with the same employer.
For example, job tenure tends to decrease when younger workers or immigrants enter the labour market in larger numbers, and having a disability can further impact tenure.
A recent study by Statistics Canada, “How long do Canadians with and without disabilities stay with their employer? A novel analysis by disability type,” used 2022 data from the Canadian Survey on Disability and the Canadian Employer-Employee Dynamics Database.
The study found that median job tenure was generally longer among employees with disabilities, largely because these employees are older on average.
Employees with disabilities were also more likely to work in services-producing sectors, such as retail, where job tenures tend to be longer than in goods-producing sectors like construction.
However, after adjusting for age, gender, and sector of employment, the median job tenure for employees with disabilities aligned with expectations, though results varied by disability type and severity.
Median job tenure was shortest among employees with developmental (4.86 years), mental health-related (5.15 years), and learning (5.17 years) disabilities, who also tended to be younger.
In contrast, employees with hearing (7.61 years) and seeing (7.37 years) disabilities had the longest tenures.
After adjustment, shorter-than-expected tenures were observed for those with dexterity, mobility, memory, flexibility, mental health-related, or pain-related disabilities, and for those with severe disabilities.
The LFS also reported that in 2024, the employment rate for persons with disabilities was 46.4 percent, compared to 66.2 percent for those without disabilities, with both groups seeing a decline of 0.7 percentage points from the previous year.
Notably, there was a significant drop in the employment rate among youth with disabilities, and the wage gap between employees with and without disabilities widened.
Business ownership among persons with disabilities is also on the rise. In the third quarter of 2025, 3 percent of private-sector businesses in Canada were majority-owned by persons with disabilities, up from 2.2 percent a year earlier, as reported by Statistics Canada.
