It's still an aging population but immigration is boosting younger generations
There’s a reason the ‘baby boomer’ generation was given that tag; a post-war jump in babies meant that the cohort became Canada’s largest population in 1958, seven years before the last of the generation was born.
Boomers comprised 40% of the Canadian population in the 60s and early 70s and, despite declining numbers as they reached old age, remained dominant until July 2023 when there were more millennials than boomers for the first time, according to newly released data from Statistics Canada.
The millennial cohort has been boosted by immigration among core working age adults and comprises 23% of the Canadian population, where it is expected to peak. Gen X has never been the largest generation due to a slower pace of babies born during the 1966-1980 period.
However, Gen Z is growing and has leapfrogged Gen X to become Canada’s third largest generation and may become the largest within the next 30 years, with recent gains also due to immigration.
Increased immigration also had an impact on the average age of Canada’s population, which reduced to 41.6 years from 41.7 years between July 2022 and July 2023. While this decrease is small numerically, it was the first since 1958. Most immigrants were under 40.
Still aging
While immigration will slow the statistical aging of the population temporarily during spikes, the population is still aging and since the early 2000s, the fastest-growing age groups have almost always been those made up of the very old thanks to medical advances that have reduced mortality at all ages over the last century.
The stats show that, on July 1, 2023, there were more than 7.5 million Canadians over 65 and slightly fewer aged under 18. It’s the first time that has happened in the country’s history.
Of course, this is not a uniform picture nationwide, with the Atlantic provinces having an older population (led by Newfoundland and Labrador with an average age of 45.7 years) while the Prairies have a younger population (Alberta’s is the youngest with an average age of 39.1).
Among other interesting takeaways from the data is that Canada's population was virtually evenly balanced between the number of women+ (20,084,054) and the number of men+ (20,013,707) on July 1, 2023.
