A Short List of the Largest Employers in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

When belonging to a leftist organization called the Toronto Labour Committee (Ontario, Canada), I worked on, in a minor position, on some statistics related to financial campaign contributions for the Toronto elections. Not being satisfied with this, I proposed that we start trying to develop a class analysis of Toronto. I indicated, though, that I did not really know how to proceed in this. I sent this over the Toronto Labour Committee listserve, and the response was–silence.

The following attempts to fill in, however inadequately, that silence.  If others can provide more detailed and sophisticated statistics and analysis (while still being comprehensible), I would much appreciate it.

In an earlier post, I provided a list of some of the largest employers in Canada, according to profit. The following is a short list of the largest employers in Toronto (where I currently live), according to employment. The reason why I think such a list would be useful is that it provides at least a somewhat concrete picture of who really has power in society and the extent of that power. Since most social-reformist leftists ignore the power of employers and assume such power as a background which they can assume as constant, they then consider their reformist policies without calling into question such power.

I hope to expand this later. If readers have better statistics or statistics from other countries or cities, feel free to comment. This should be a work in progress.

It is taken from the following, for February 2018:

Largest Enployers in Toronto According to Employment Level

It should be pointed out that these statistics are probably for the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) rather than the City of Toronto as such since the website states “This list estimates the number of residents from Toronto and surrounding area that each company employs. These numbers exclude international employees.” Furthermore, the method of collecting the data is vague (“Based on some research conducted on the number of available LinkedIn profiles, here is a list of the top 20 largest employers in Toronto as of February 2018.”) Consequently, the statistics should not be taken too literally. Nevertheless, they may give an idea of the relative order of the larger employers in relation to the level of employment.

Obviously, there are different ways of considering what the largest employers are. At least four come to mind readily: according to profit, according to employment, according to total revenue (sales) and according to assets.

The following list of the 20 largest employers lists in Toronto according to level of employment.

1. CIBC = 15,000
2. Scotiabank = 14,400
3. Magna International = 11,500
4. Rogers = 10,000
5. Bank of Montreal = 9,000
6. Bell Canada = 7,900
7. TD Bank = 6,100
8. Toronto School Board District = 5,500
9. Deloitte = 4,000
10. Hudson’s Bay Company = 4,100
11. Telus = 4, 000
12. Air Canada = 3,100
13. Toronto Transit Commission = 2,500
14. Bombardier Inc. = 2,030
15. Royal Bank of Canada = 1, 700
16. EY = 1,700
17. CGI = 1,700
18. Maple Leaf Foods = 1,300
19. PwC = 1,300
20. The Coca Cola Company = 1, 100

The total number of workers is: 107,930 workers.

In Toronto (not the Greater Toronto Area), the number of employees in 2017 was 1, 518,560. The population in Toronto in 2016 was  2,731,571; the population in the GTA was 6,417,526 in 2016. If we divide the GTA population by Toronto’s population, we have 6,417,526/2,731,571=2.34939. If we multiply this number by the number of workers in Toronto, we should have a rough estimate of the number of workers in the GTA: 2.34939×1,518,560=3, 567, 690 workers in the GTA.

If the number of workers of the 20 largest employers is divided by the number of workers in the GTA, then those workers represent only 3% of the number of workers in the GTA.

In terms of employment, the 20 largest employers in the GTA do not represent a great percentage of total employment. Nonetheless, it is likely that they do represent a substantial political force via their control over key industries (financing and communications in particular) and their influence through such organizations as the Toronto Board of Trade. On the other hand, at least in terms of employment, it is unlikely these large employers (defined as those with 500 or more employees) that constitute the bulk of employment in Toronto but rather medium (100-500 employees) and especially small employers (1-99 employees) since, in Canada, it is small businesses that employee most workers:  “As of 2017, small businesses employed 8.29 million individuals in Canada, or 69.7 percent of the total private labour force. By comparison, medium-sized businesses employed 2.37 million individuals (19.9 percent of the private labour force) and large businesses employed 1.23 million individuals (10.4 percent of the private labour force)” (Key Small Business Statistics, January 2019, page 3).

On the other hand, the value of output in Canada according to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is, relatively, much larger for large employers than for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) since the number of large employers is much smaller than the number of SMEs: “In 2014, the contribution of small businesses to gross domestic product generated by the private sector was 41.5 percent, the contribution of medium-sized businesses was 11.0 percent and the contribution of large businesses was 47.5 percent.” (Key Small Business Statistics, January 2019, page 4).

If we subtract the number of public-sector workers from the above Toronto list, we have 107,930-(5500+2500=8000)=99,930 private-sector workers, or 99,930. Dividing this by the number of workers in the GTA would result in only 2.8 percent of the working population. If, however, we consider that 10.4 percent of the private labour force is found in Canada but 47.5 percent of the GDP is produced by this labour force in Canada, then we can calculate 47.5/10.4=4.5673 times the GDP is produced by employees working for large-scale employers. We can then times this amount by 2.8 percent (4.5673×2.8)=12.79 percent. The 18 private largest employers in Toronto probably exert around 12.79 percent in terms of economic power in Toronto. Despite the limited level of employment power and the limited number of employers, the level of economic power is substantial. It would be interesting to see if this economic power is translated in various ways into political power.

(If anyone has any alternative ways of estimating economic power, I would like to know. Undoubtedly, the above is imperfect, but I fail to see anyone on the so-called left referring to major employers in Toronto having any economic and political power. There is of course the usual “capitalist this” and “capitalist that,” but very few concrete details.)

Of course, this is a very rough estimate. Furthermore, more useful statistics would include the value of the means of production and, for the 18 private companies, profits as well. In addition, there is no distinction made between part-time and full-time employees.

If we compare the 20 largest Canadian employers according to profit to the list of the largest Toronto employers, there are several on both lists: all five major banks and Rogers Communication.


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