Canada’s economic policy uncertainty index has climbed back to levels not seen since the COVID-19 pandemic, a sign that a more volatile period may be taking hold. Income inequality hit a record high last year, and youth unemployment reached 14.6 per cent in September 2025, its highest point since 2010, excluding the pandemic.
Most Canadians have had relatively little experience with major economic downturns. Since the early 1990s, Canada has largely been spared the boom-and-bust cycles common in the United States. The country avoided the worst of the 2008 global financial crisis, and until COVID-19, had not experienced a major economic shock in a generation.
In that long stretch of time, Canadians have grown accustomed to relative stability, which makes the current moment feel especially disorienting. We are, as the saying goes, living in “interesting times,” and that is rarely good news for prices, employment prospects, government budgets, business investment or productivity.
