Canada's population is up 12.5 per cent since 2014. The non-military federal civil service is up 39.9 per cent. What's going on?

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Buried among the many tables in Statistics Canada’s June employment report are data on public sector employment: federal, provincial and local employees hired by departments, agencies, hospitals and schools, including universities and colleges. As of June, 4.412 million workers were public employees, representing 21.5 per cent of Canada’s workforce. That is an astonishing 972,000 more (28.3 per cent) than in 2014, when 3.439 million Canadians were working for governments. And the numbers don’t include contracted services.

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Over this period Canada’s population rose 12.2 per cent. Why public sector employment had to grow at more than twice that rate is hard to understand. The effect of such feverish growth is clear, however: it has pushed up wage rates and likely would have done so even if three-quarters of public sector workers weren’t unionized. Private employment, including self-employment, has risen only 12.4 per cent since 2014 — almost the same rate as population growth. If it weren’t for immigration, private employers would be desperate for workers and would have had to forgo production.

All governments in Canada are expanding their workforces, but the most rapid growth is in the federal government. From 2014 through last year, the non-military federal civil service grew from 257,138 to 357,247. That is an........

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