38.4% of Oshawa metro residents aged 15 and older faced household financial difficulties in October 2026

Statistics Canada reports that 38.4% of residents aged 15 and older in the Oshawa census metropolitan area lived in households struggling to meet basic expenses in October 2026, the highest share among Canada’s 15 largest metropolitan areas.

The measure covers difficulties paying for housing, food, transportation, clothing and other necessary expenses over the previous four weeks. Nationally, the share was 29.7%, up from 27.7% in October 2025, according to the agency’s Labour Force Survey released Nov. 6. The national share rose for the first time since 2022, when it was 35.5% in October.

Windsor had the second-highest share among the 15 metropolitan areas at 36.9%, followed by Hamilton at 35.9%. The Québec census metropolitan area had the lowest share, at 15.7%, Statistics Canada reported.

The Oshawa census metropolitan area’s unemployment rate stood at 8.9% in October, unchanged from September and up 0.4 percentage points from a year earlier, according to the survey’s seasonally adjusted three-month moving averages. The area had an estimated 25,000 unemployed people and 255,900 employed people.

Ontario’s unemployment rate rose 0.3 percentage points from September to 7.3% as more people searched for work, the agency reported. Nationally, the unemployment rate increased 0.2 percentage points to 6.7%.