More Canadians covered by workplace benefits in 2024

A new report from Statistics Canada on the quality of employment in Canada, is focused on the percentage of the population with medical and dental benefits coverage from their employers in 2024.

Entitled Medical or dental benefits coverage, 2024, the report states that 66.8 per cent of employees in Canada had workplace medical or dental benefits through their main job last year. The figure is up from 63.3 per cent in 2021, 64.2 per cent in 2022 and 66.4 per cent in 2023.

Employees working full-time or with permanent jobs had higher rates of coverage when compared with employees working part-time or in temporary employment. Women were less likely to have workplace medical or dental coverage, due to their higher participation in part-time employment. The report states that the gender gap in coverage largely disappears when comparing women and men working full-time.

Gender gap  

Overall, however, 63.8 per cent of women had medical or dental benefits, compared with 69.5 per cent of men. “The gender gap in workplace medical or dental coverage partly reflects the fact that women were almost twice as likely to work part-time than men (21.6 per cent versus 11.4 per cent),” they state. “The rate of workplace medical or dental coverage was considerably lower among employees working part time (20.7 per cent) compared with those in full-time positions (76.1 per cent).” 

Young employees and temporary workers 

Even when working full-time, however, youth (15 to 24 years old) were much less likely to have access to employer-provided medical or dental benefits – just 46.3 per cent of this cohort had benefits. And while 79.1 per cent of full-time, permanent employees had access in 2024, only 9.7 per cent of temporary, part-time employees could say the same.

“Employees in permanent jobs have been increasingly likely to have medical or dental care benefits in recent years. Among permanent employees in 2024, 71.9 per cent had access to workplace medical or dental care benefits, up 3.6 percentage points from 2021,” they write. “On the other hand, the proportion of temporary employees who were covered by workplace medical or dental care plans has fallen, from 26.8 per cent in 2021 to 26.1 per cent in 2024.”