Commuting – 2021 Census promotional material

Quick facts

• The way Canadians commute was altered in 2021 by the pandemic, with lockdowns to slow the spread of COVID-19 and changes in how and where Canadians worked leading to 2.8 million fewer commuters, compared with five years earlier.
• The number of Canadians "car commuting" — that is, travelling to work by car, truck or van as a driver or as a passenger—declined by 1.7 million from five years earlier to reach 11 million in May 2021. The drop in car commuting mainly occurred among those working in professional service industries, while the number of front-line workers commuting by car increased.
• There were 245,000 fewer Canadians making car commutes of at least 60 minutes, compared with May 2016.
• The number of people usually taking public transit to work fell from 2 million in 2016 to 1 million in May 2021, declining for the first time since the census began collecting commuting data in 1996.
• With the economy more open and most public health measures related to the pandemic removed, the number of car commuters, at 12.8 million, had exceeded 2016 levels by May 2022. However, the number of public transit commuters, at 1.2 million, remained well below pre-COVID-19 levels.
• Despite the drop in public transit use, the proportion of Canadians using mass transit or walking or cycling to get to work was higher than that of Americans.
• While Canadian government investments in walking and bicycle trails continues, nearly 300,000 fewer workers were usually using active transit (walking or bicycling) as a main mode of commuting in May 2021, compared with five years earlier. By May 2022, active transit commuting in the provinces had increased to 941,000 from 788,000 in May 2021, but was still lower than the 1.1 million recorded in 2016.

Resources

• The Daily - Has the COVID-19 pandemic changed commuting patterns for good?

Social media content

Statistics Canada encourages our community supporters to share our content and images to their own social media accounts. You can save the images to your device and copy and paste the text content to your social media platforms.

Web images

Commuting tile (JPG, 103 KB)

Terms of use

See the terms of use for information on the approved use of official wordmarks, identifiers and content.