Employment in the warehouse sector

There were 62,331 people employed in the warehouse sector (NAICS 493, 4931) in Canada in 2020, a 30.5% increase in employment since 2016. As noted below, the union density for the sector sits at around 12%, meaning there are probably at least 54,850 non-union warehouse workers across the country.

According to Statistics Canada, in 2020 there were 2,583 warehouse establishments in Canada, though it is important to remember this number is for NAICS 4931, and does not include all the workplaces we might informally include in the category of warehouse companies.

There are an additional 2,101 warehouse establishments classified “non-employers or indeterminate” (those that have an indeterminate number of employees, as well as those with only a temporary workforce, or family members as employees), but we will ignore that category for the purpose of this paper.