Health Care and Social Assistance (NAICS 62): Saskatchewan, 2025

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Highlights

• Saskatchewan’s health care and social assistance sector (NAICS 62) contributed $6.4 billion or 8% of the province’s total economic output ($80.5 billion) in 2024, making it the province’s sixth largest sector by economic output.
• By employment, health care and social assistance is the largest sector in Saskatchewan. In 2024, there were 93,700 people employed in the sector, representing 16% of the province’s total employed workforce.
• Employment in the sector remains highly urbanized, with 65.5% of workers concentrated in the Saskatoon-Biggar (36.2%) and Regina-Moose Mountain (29.3%) economic regions.
• The outlook for employment in the sector remains positively strong for the 2025-2027 period, driven by high demand for workers in health care and social assistance. However, ongoing labour shortages may limit the pace of employment growth.

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About the Sector

The health care and social assistance sector comprises establishments primarily engaged in providing health care services, residential care for medical and social reasons, and social assistance, such as counselling, welfare, childcare and vocational rehabilitation. The sector includes four subsectors – ambulatory health care services, hospitals, nursing and residential care facilities, and social assistance. Ambulatory health care services encompass physician and dental offices, outpatient clinics, and diagnostic labs; hospitals cover general, psychiatric, and specialty hospitals; nursing and residential care includes long-term care homes and assisted living; and social assistance covers services such as family support, food and housing programs, and childcare services.

Recent labour market highlights in this sector include remarkable recruitment results from the province’s Health Human Resource Action Plan. Between September 2022 and November 2024, 218 physicians have been recruited to Saskatchewan from outside the province and 35 physicians from outside the country, resulting in 87 family doctors and 131 specialists establishing their practice in the province. Additionally, more than 1,400 recent nursing graduates have been hired from in-and out-of-province, and nearly 400 internationally educated nurses have arrived from the Philippines. The province’s $300 million investment into the recruitment and retention strategy underpins this effort, ensuring workforce sustainability. Program funding has been strategically distributed to expand rural services and enhance community health, such as the $5.3 million allocated through the Community Initiatives Fund and the $375,000 dedicated to intensive in-home services outside Regina and Saskatoon.

Composition and importance of the sector

In Saskatchewan, the health care and social assistance sector employed 93,700 workers in 2024, accounting for 15.6% of the province’s total employment. This makes the sector the largest by employment in the province. In 2024, the sector added 3,900 more workers compared to the previous year. The majority of jobs in the sector are concentrated in the hospital and social assistance subsectors, which together account for more than two-thirds (64.4%) of overall employment in health care and social assistance.

In 2024, the health care and social assistance sector generated $6.4 billion in total economic output (gross domestic product (GDP)). This accounted for 8% of the total provincial GDP. At the subsector level, Hospitals emerge as the largest contributor to the sector’s GDP, generating $2.3 billion and more than one-third (36.5%) of the sector’s GDP in 2024. Ambulatory health care services is the next largest contributor to the sector GDP with $2.1 billion or one-third of the sector GDP. Nursing and residential care facilities contributed $1.3 billion, and social assistance added another $635 million. Between 2023 and 2024, health care and social assistance total economic output increased by approximately $273 million, or 4.5%, with health growing by 4.1% ($227.6 million) and social assistance by 7.6% or $44.8 million.

Saskatchewan’s health care and social services sector posted an annual average growth rate of 5.0% from 2020 to 2024, possibly underpinned by increased provincial health expenditures, digital transformation in service delivery, and targeted investment in rural and Indigenous healthcare infrastructure.

Geographical distribution of employment

In Saskatchewan, the Saskatoon–Biggar economic region accounts for the largest share of employment in the health care and social assistance sector, representing 36.2% of the workforce in 2024. The Regina–Moose Mountain region employed approximately 27,500 workers in the sector, making up 29.3% of total sector employment. Combined, these two urban centres represent nearly two-thirds of all employment in Saskatchewan’s health care and social assistance sector.

Outside the urban cores, the Prince Albert and Northern economic region makes up roughly 19.4% of the sector’s employed workforce, while Swift Current-Moose Jaw accounts for 8.1% and Yorkton-Melville employs the remaining 6.9%. Recruitment remains a challenge in these areas.

Although most health care and social assistance jobs in Saskatchewan are in the urban regions, rural areas rely more on the sector for employment. In the Yorkton-Melville and Prince Albert and Northern economic regions, the sector accounts for 18% of all jobs across all sectors. This compares to 15% in the province overall and in urban regions.

Employment (NAICS 62) by Economic Region, Saskatchewan, 2024

Economic Regions, Saskatchewan	Employment (x 1,000), 2024	Sector (NAICS 62) Share (%)
Regina-Moose Mountain, Saskatchewan	27.5	29.35%
Swift Current-Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan	7.6	8.11%
Saskatoon-Biggar, Saskatchewan	33.9	36.18%
Yorkton-Melville, Saskatchewan	6.5	6.94%
Prince Albert and Northern, Saskatchewan	18.2	19.42%

Source: Statistics Canada, Labour Force Survey

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Workforce

Workforce characteristics

In 2024, most workers employed in Saskatchewan’s health care and social assistance sector worked full-time (79.6%), with a higher proportion of males working full time (87.2%) compared to females (77.8%). The share of persons working full-time was lower in health care and social assistance compared to all workers in the province overall – 82.4%. Core-aged workers, 25 to 54 years, made up 71.3% of those working in the health care and social assistance sector. This compares to 18.1% nearing retirement i.e., ages 55 and older. The share of workers nearing retirement in the health care and social assistance sector was lower than the rate in the services-producing sector (20.3%) and province overall (21.2%). The social assistance subsector had the lowest share of older workers – 13.2%.

In 2024, about eight in ten workers (80.9%) in Saskatchewan’s health care and social assistance sector were females, significantly higher than the share of females in the services-producing sector (54.7%) and in the province’s employed workforce overall (46.5%). Males were relatively more represented in the nursing and residential care facilities subsector, making up 24.8% of workers, and least represented in the social assistance subsector where less than two in ten workers (15.5%) were male.

In Saskatchewan, health care and social assistance workers earned a median hourly wage of $25.25/hour in 2024, lower than the national median wage for this sector ($29.00/hour) and only higher than Manitoba among all provinces. Entry-level clinical occupations, typically under NOC 33102 (nurse aides, orderlies, and patient service associates), earned $23.97 per hour. Mid-career professionals – such as licensed practical nurses and respiratory therapists – earned $38.09 and $43.00 hourly, respectively. Advanced practice roles and urban specialist positions, like nurse practitioners, made $62.00 per hour. Meanwhile, management and supervisory positions across hospitals and community health centres earned $54.81 per hour.

Source: Statistics Canada, Labour Force Survey

The sector’s educational profile is above the provincial average: 82% of workers hold post-secondary credentials, and nearly 45% possess university degrees. Notably, healthcare data analysts and clinical informatics specialists – roles experiencing 25% and 20% growth respectively – are increasingly recruited from interdisciplinary backgrounds blending computer science and health studies.

While urban employment remains stable with vacancy rates of 3.4%, rural and northern areas experience up to 40% vacancy for specialized positions.

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Occupations of Interest

The sector’s workforce includes a broad array of occupations. The top five occupations employed in Saskatchewan’s health care and social assistance sector in 2024 were nurse aides, orderlies and patient services associates (14.1%); registered nurses and registered psychiatric nurses (13.0%); early childhood educators and assistants (8.1%); social and community services workers (6.2%); and receptionists (3.3%).

Registered nurses and registered psychiatric nurses provide direct nursing care to patients, deliver health education programs and provide consultative services regarding issues relevant to the practice of nursing. They are employed in a variety of settings including hospitals, nursing homes, extended care facilities, rehabilitation centres, doctors' offices, clinics, community agencies, companies, private homes and public and private organizations or they may be self-employed.

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Recent History

Between 2022 and 2025, Saskatchewan’s Health Care and Social Assistance sector has undergone measurable transformation driven by demographic shifts, technological integration, and targeted public investment. According to Statistics Canada, the sector’s employment grew from approximately 81,100 in 2020 to nearly 93,700 in 2024, representing a 15.5% expansion. This growth occurred alongside a marked increase in job vacancies, which rose from 1,000 in Q1 2020 to 4,420 by Q2 2024. Employment in the health and social assistance sector was primarily driven by strong job gains in the social assistance, and the nursing and residential care facilities subsectors. Between 2020 and 2024, social assistance added 6,800 jobs, representing an expansion of 45%, and nursing and residential care facilities grew by 2,500 jobs, up 18.9%. Hospitals recorded an increase of 2,300 jobs, representing 6.4% growth, while ambulatory health care services added 900 jobs, a rise of +5.4% over the same period.

Regionally, Yorkton-Melville recorded the strongest growth in health care and social assistance employment, with a 25% increase between 2020 and 2024. Saskatoon-Biggar followed with a 23.3% rise, while Regina-Moose Mountain recorded a 14.6% increase in sector employment over the same period. The province’s two largest regions, Saskatoon–Biggar and Regina–Moose Mountain, continued to employ about 65% of the provincial health care and social assistance workforce.

The health care and social assistance sector was one of the strongest performing services-producing sectors in 2024. However, the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses continued sounding the alarm on over-crowding issues in the province’s largest hospitals due to chronic understaffing. These issues boiled over in Q3 2024 as Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital was found to be in violation of Occupational Health and Safety rules for obstructing safe means of entry and exit due to too many patients in the emergency room and area, and St Paul’s hospital was found to be in violation of the fire code due to beds in the hallways blocking exits. The Government of Saskatchewan has increased efforts to address the shortages via some new initiatives including, streamlining the Saskatchewan Immigrant Nominee Program for healthcare workers to attract more qualified staff to the province, increasing the capacity of the Saskatchewan International Physician Practice Assessment program by eight seats to attract more physicians to rural and remote communities, and funding a new sonography program at Suncrest College in Yorkton to address the undersupply of ultrasound technologists in Saskatchewan.

More recently, workers in health care and education remained the main beneficiaries of the 2025/2026 provincial government budget. The largest funding increases were announced for health care, including a $485 million increase to the Ministry of Health for a total of $8.1 billion; $261 million more to the Saskatchewan Health Authority for a total of $4.9 billion; and an extra $30 million to the Saskatchewan Cancer Agency for a total of $279 million. The goal of the new funding is to provide better access to acute care programs and services to improve patient outcomes. As of Q1-2025, there were 7,200 (+7.9%) more jobs in health care and social assistance compared to Q1 2024, the highest increase in the province compared to all industries.

Demographic changes also influenced labour market outcomes and future needs. Between 2020 and 2024, Saskatchewan’s population aged 65 and older grew by 13.2%, with Statistics Canada projecting an additional 13.4% increase by 2030. The province also experienced record population growth over the recent two years, driven by strong immigration and newcomer arrivals to the province. This trend is however expected to slowdown following the federal government’s cuts to immigration levels for the next three years. The expected slowdown in population growth may soften the pressure on the healthcare system and probably help ease the persisting worker shortages as hiring catches up with service demands.

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Employment Outlook

Employment prospects in Saskatchewan’s health care and social assistance sector should remain strong for the period 2025-2027, but ongoing labour shortages may pose hiring and retention challenges for employers. While workers in the goods-producing sector grapple with what tariffs mean for their jobs, employees in the services-producing sector, particularly those in health care and social assistance look to government spending budget for insights into the job market. The largest funding increases announced for health care in the 2025/2026 budget, including a $485 million increase to the Ministry of Health for a total of $8.1 billion, increased funding for service delivery partners in social services, as well as the creation of more social and supportive housing, should bring some uptick in demand for workers in the sector. Employment growth should be reinforced by targeted investments in technology, community services, and rural workforce development. According to Saskatchewan’s Industry Labour Demand Outlook for 2028, the largest gains in the province’s job openings are expected in health care and social assistance, driven by 6,430 job openings due to expansion demand and 10,580 jobs arising from replacement needs.

Health care workers will welcome the extra budgetary funding as shortages continue to plague the province. Meanwhile, an increasing reliance on contract and travel nurses to staff rural and remote facilities has not been sustainable. Other challenges facing the sector include understaffing and bourn out among medical imaging and laboratory technologists, while hours and services in clinics and hospitals continue to be cut due to nurse and physician shortages. Key provincial investments to address such pressures should support job growth. These include a $30 million investment to expand Saskatoon City Hospital to address inpatient capacity pressures, $18.6 million to address new and ongoing mental health and addictions initiatives, as well as human resource enhancing initiatives such as increasing the capacity of the Saskatchewan International Physician Practice Assessment program by eight seats to attract more physicians to rural and remote communities, and funding a new sonography program at Suncrest College in Yorkton to address the undersupply of ultrasound technologists in Saskatchewan.

Rural and remote Saskatchewan should see moderate-to-strong demand for workers in health care and social assistance as such regions continue to face a growing crisis of limited health care workers. Across west-central communities, emergency room closures, ambulance shortages, and staff vacancies have left residents with fewer options for timely medical care. The provincial government recently announced a much-needed boost to care services in such areas, adding 77 new and enhanced permanent full-time positions to 30 rural and remote communities. This should support job growth in the sector over the forecast period.

Provincial investment and initiatives to address labour shortages in health care should be bolstered by federal government support, further strengthening expected job growth in the sector. The Government of Canada is investing $14.3 million to help address critical healthcare labour shortages, a move that will help get internationally trained doctors, nurses, and practitioners into struggling medical facilities in Saskatchewan. The initiative will support more than 3,500 health care workers through work placements, wage subsidies, mentoring, and training programs.

Urban areas will continue to dominate job creation, but the policy focus on rural, Indigenous, and digital health infrastructure indicates a growing commitment to geographic and demographic equity in health care access and employment outcomes.

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Prepared by: Labour Market Information Directorate, Service Canada - Western Canada and Territories (W-T) Region

For further information, please contact the Labour Market Information Directorate here.