Real GDP per person in Canada, 1925 to 2025

This issue covers Canada's real gross domestic product (GDP) per person, 1925 to 2025, in three images: a chart, the Party Scoreboard (Liberal vs Conservative / PC) and the PM Scoreboard (average growth under each Prime Minister). "Per capita", in the image titles, means per person.

On the chart, each year is shaded by the party in office for most of that year: red for Liberal, blue for Conservative and Progressive Conservative. Diagonal stripes mark minority governments.

GDP is harder to compare fairly than it looks, so this issue also tests the numbers: against other sources, against another way of adjusting for inflation, against the timing of each government, and against the United States economy in the same years.

In brief. Real GDP per person rose about 6.2 times from 1925 to 2025. Average yearly growth was 2.8% in Liberal years and 0.3% in Conservative and PC years. Set aside timing and two big episodes, the Great Depression and the Second World War, and the gap is roughly 1 percentage point. Measured against the United States in the same years, it is under 1 point. On the plain averages, the 20 years from 2006 to 2025 run slightly the other way (0.6% for Conservative and PC years, 0.5% for Liberal years). Shading and ranks show who was in office, not who caused the result.

GDP is the value of all the goods and services produced in Canada in a year. Dividing it by the population gives GDP per person, or output per person for short. The chart uses real GDP: Statistics Canada's own measure with price changes taken out, so each year shows how much was produced, not how much prices rose.

The dollars are constant 2025 dollars: every year is shown at 2025 prices, using GDP prices (the prices of everything produced in Canada, not only what households buy). In 2025, real GDP per person was $77,994. In 1925, it was $12,586 in 2025 dollars. The 2025 figure is about 6.2 times the 1925 one: the same as steady growth of 1.8% a year.

GDP per person measures output. It is not the same as income or well-being: it leaves out how income is shared, and a change in the population's age mix can move it.

The steepest falls came in the Great Depression: −12.6% in 1931, −10.4% in 1932 and −8.3% in 1933. Real GDP per person fell 31.8% from 1929 to 1933. Next came 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, at −6.1%, then 1930 at −5.0% and 1982 at −4.3%. Three years fell 4.0%: 1946, 1954 and 2009.

The biggest gains came in the Second World War: 16.1% in 1942 and 12.1% in both 1940 and 1941. Real GDP per person rose 53.2% from 1939 to 1944, a period when output included war production, which counts in GDP even though households could not buy it. Since 1950, the largest gains were 6.7% in 1955 and 6.0% in 1956. In 2021, output per person rebounded 5.4% after the 2020 drop.

Real GDP per person fell in 23 of the 101 years and rose in 78. Its high point so far is 2022, at $78,635; in 2025 it was 0.8% below that.

The numbered markers give context, not credit or blame:

The recession dates are Statistics Canada's.

Newfoundland joined Canada on March 31, 1949, and the figures include it from 1949. Its output per person was less than half the rest of Canada's (43% in 1950), so its entry lowered the national figure: growth in 1949 shows −0.4%, and would have been about 1.1% without the change in borders. 1949 counts for Louis St-Laurent: without the border change, his average would be 2.9% instead of 2.7%, and the Liberal average on the Party Scoreboard would stay at 2.8%. The series is left as Statistics Canada publishes it.

The line rises so steadily that it is fair to ask whether it is right, so we checked it against other long series. Four match it closely: Statistics Canada's own per-person table (from 1981), the World Bank (from 1960), the International Monetary Fund (from 1980) and the Penn World Table, a university database (from 1950). Their growth rates differ from ours by only 0.03 to 0.14 percentage points a year on average, and they show nearly the same years of decline.

The Maddison Project, a long-run database kept by economic historians, also reaches back to 1925. Over the whole century it shows a slightly larger rise than ours (6.6 times from 1925 to 2022, against 6.2), not a flatter one. Every source that covers them shows the same dips: the Depression, 1982, the early 1990s, 2009 and 2020.

The steady look comes partly from the chart itself. On a chart in dollars, a fall of the same percentage looks smaller in the early years, when output per person was lower. The 1929 to 1933 fall (31.8%) and the 2020 fall (6.1%) look about the same height, because each was a fall of about $4,700 to $4,800 per person.

When Gov Scoreboard shows dollar amounts, it adjusts for inflation with the Consumer Price Index (CPI). GDP is the exception, for a reason.

Statistics Canada measures real GDP piece by piece. It takes price changes out of each part of the economy with that part's own prices: what households buy with consumer prices, machinery with machinery prices, exports with export prices, government services with their own costs. Then it adds the pieces up. This is the international standard for measuring real GDP. The chart uses that finished series and only restates it in 2025 dollars, which changes no growth rate.

The CPI prices only what households buy, including imported goods. It leaves out the oil, grain, lumber and other goods Canada sells abroad. Dividing all of GDP, in current dollars, by the CPI (the "CPI version" below) measures something else: how much consumer shopping Canada's output could pay for. That swings with world commodity prices. In 2021, real output per person grew 5.4%, but the CPI version shows 9.9%, because export prices jumped. In 2009, when export prices fell, the CPI version fell 6.5%, against 4.0% for real output. Statistics Canada publishes its own measure of that buying-power idea, called real gross domestic income.

The CPI version does not change the big picture. Both versions are in 2025 dollars, so they meet at $77,994 in 2025. Going back in time, consumer prices rose less than GDP prices before 1981, so the CPI version starts lower, at $9,806 in 1925, and rises about 8 times. Since 1981 the two versions have grown almost the same. Both show 23 years of decline, though not all the same years. On the CPI version, average growth is 3.1% in Liberal years and 0.2% in Conservative and PC years. On the PM Scoreboard, the top row and the bottom three stay the same, but 11 of the 18 ranked rows move by one to four places.

Real GDP per person rose over the century, so later years have higher dollar levels no matter who was in office. Averaging the dollar level by party would mostly measure when each party governed.

The numbers show it. Conservative and PC years average $47,156 per person and Liberal years $40,736. Most of that gap comes from timing: Conservative and PC years fall 8.5 years later on average, when output per person was higher whoever governed, and a smooth line through the century that ignores parties accounts for 91% of the gap on its own. Ranked by dollar level, the PM Scoreboard would almost exactly follow the calendar, with Justin Trudeau first and Arthur Meighen last.

So the two scoreboards use each year's growth instead: the percentage change from the year before. That puts early and late years on a much more equal footing, though not a perfectly equal one, as the next section shows.

Growth itself has not been steady. Real GDP per person grew 2.8% a year on average from 1925 to 1956, the Depression and the war included, and 1.6% from 1957 to 2025. By decade, it grew 3.3% a year in the 1960s and 2.8% in the 1970s, then 1.6% in the 1980s and 1.3% in the 1990s. Since 2000 it has averaged 0.9% a year: 1.1% in both the 2000s and the 2010s, and 0.2% from 2020 to 2025.

Liberals governed more of the earlier, faster years: 84% of the years from 1925 to 1956, and 62% of the years since. So part of any comparison of growth between parties, or between Prime Ministers, comes from when they governed. The dollar level would favour whoever governed later; growth leans, more mildly, toward whoever governed earlier.

Across all 101 years, the average annual growth of real GDP per person was 2.0%, and the median was 2.0%. That is a little higher than the steady 1.8% a year given above, partly because falls and rises of the same size do not cancel out (a 10% fall followed by a 10% rise leaves output 1% lower), and partly because the 101 yearly figures include 1925's growth of 9.1%, which came before the 1925 starting point. The median is the middle value when the years are lined up from lowest to highest. A few extreme years can pull an average a long way; the median is less affected.

In the 70 Liberal years, the average was 2.8% and the median 2.5%. In the 31 Conservative and PC years, the average was 0.3% and the median 1.1%. 2026 is not counted: it has no full-year figure yet.

The row "Average annual growth vs decade average (% points)" compares each year's growth with the average growth of its decade (for the 1920s, the years 1925 to 1929 on the board). The difference is in percentage points ("points" from here on), not per cent: a year that grew 4% in a decade that averaged 3% counts as +1 point. This takes out the long slowdown. On that measure, Liberal years grew 0.5 points a year faster than their decade's average, and Conservative and PC years 1.1 points slower. The "All years" column shows N/A: measured against itself, each decade averages zero. For the same reason, decades that one party governed throughout (1925 to 1929, the 1940s and 2020 to 2025, all Liberal) add nothing to that party's figure on this row.

The gap between 2.8% and 0.3% is 2.5 points. We tested it five ways.

Timing. Growth was faster in the early decades, when Liberals held more of the years. Depending on how each period's normal growth is measured (its decade's average is one way), timing accounts for 0.1 to 0.9 points of the 2.5-point gap.

Two big episodes. The Depression years under R.B. Bennett, 1931 to 1935, which include the three steepest falls, were Conservative years, with output per person falling 3.2% a year on average. The Second World War years, 1939 to 1945, were Liberal years, with output per person rising 6.9% a year. Leave out both and the averages are 2.3% for Liberal years and 0.9% for Conservative and PC years, a gap of 1.4 points.

World conditions. The United States economy is a rough gauge of world conditions that no Canadian government controls. From 1930 to 2025 (the United States figures start in 1929), it grew 2.7% a year per person on average in the years Liberals governed Canada, and 1.0% in the Conservative and PC years. Subtract United States growth from Canada's in each year, and the gap between the parties shrinks to under 1 point; the medians are almost the same, with Conservative and PC years slightly ahead. Since 1981, measured that way, Conservative and PC years show slightly faster growth than Liberal years.

Recent years. Since 1981, Liberal years grew 1.4% a year on average and Conservative and PC years 0.7%. In the 20 years from 2006 to 2025, 10 for each party, the order reverses: Conservative and PC years grew 0.6% a year on average and Liberal years 0.5%.

Policy takes time. A government's decisions can take a year or more to show up in the economy, so we also credited each year's growth to the party in office the year before. Liberal years still grew faster from 1925 to 2025, but the gap shrinks from 2.5 points to 1.7. Most of that change comes from one year: 1931, the worst year of the Depression, moves from R.B. Bennett's Conservatives to Mackenzie King's Liberals, who governed most of 1930. From 1946 on, the gap is 1.1 points either way. With a two-year delay, 1932, the second-worst year of the Depression (−10.4%), also moves to King's Liberals, and the recovery year 1937 (7.9%) moves to Bennett; the gap shrinks to 0.5 points.

What is left: over the whole century, Liberal years still show faster growth, by roughly 1 point a year once timing and the two big episodes are set aside together (the two overlap, so their separate effects do not simply add up). Measured against United States growth, the gap is under 1 point, and since 1981 Conservative and PC years show slightly faster growth on that measure. The gaps measured against the United States and with a two-year delay are small enough to be chance; the roughly 1-point gap is borderline, depending on how it is measured. That describes who was in office when growth happened. It does not show that either party caused it. Growth depends on world trade and commodity prices, wars, pandemics, interest rates, population change and decisions made years earlier.

Published research finds that the link between party and growth depends on the period. A 2024 study of Canada from 1870 to 2020 found no evidence that output grew faster under Liberal governments over the whole period, or that federal spending and taxes changed with the party in power. It did find distinct periods: an early one consistent with Sir John A. Macdonald's Conservative nation-building policies, a difference between the parties from 1885 to 1933, and no apparent difference after the Great Depression. A 2016 study of the United States found faster growth under one party's presidents, and traced most of it to oil prices, productivity and world conditions rather than to more expansionary government spending, taxes or interest rates.

The PM Scoreboard sorts each term by its average annual growth of real GDP per person, from highest to lowest.

Most rows are a term: one unbroken stretch as Prime Minister, however many elections it spans. Each year counts in proportion to the days in office that year, so 1957 counts partly for Louis St-Laurent and partly for John Diefenbaker. The "Years counted" column adds up those shares.

Whole terms count, even where they start before the chart does. Arthur Meighen's first term began on July 10, 1920, and Mackenzie King's first term on December 29, 1921, so the PM Scoreboard also uses the years 1920 to 1924. That is why its title starts in 1920. Real GDP per person fell 3.0% in 1920 and 12.0% in 1921, grew 12.8% in 1922 and 5.4% in 1923, and fell 0.7% in 1924. The chart and the Party Scoreboard start in 1925.

Statistics Canada's annual GDP figures begin in 1926. Growth up to 1926 comes from estimates by the economic historian M.C. Urquhart (1986). They measure gross national product, which counts the output of Canadian residents rather than output in Canada, and they are the least certain figures in the series.

The 18 ranked rows are 15 terms plus 3 combined rows. A combined row repeats terms already listed; it is not another government. The ranked rows run from 6.4% down to −9.1%.

Rows that show the same rounded figure share a rank. Stephen Harper and Pierre Trudeau's second term both show 0.6% and share rank 13, so the next row ranks 15.

The highest is Mackenzie King's first term, 1921 to 1926, at 6.4%. It covers the recovery from the depression that followed the First World War, including 12.8% growth in 1922.

The lowest is Arthur Meighen's first term, 1920 to 1921, at −9.1%. It covers that depression; real GDP per person fell 12.0% in 1921.

Both ends rest on Urquhart's estimates. Neither end is a verdict. The last three rows are below zero, which means output per person shrank on average in those terms; all three cover the depression after the First World War or the Great Depression.

Mackenzie King, Arthur Meighen and Pierre Trudeau each held office more than once, so each also gets a combined row, shaded grey. A combined row weights each term by its years counted, so a longer term counts for more.

Meighen's two terms show −9.1% and 4.8%. A simple average would be about −2%, but his first term is 1.5 of his 1.7 years, so the combined row shows −7.1%. Meighen's second term is too short to rank on its own, but his combined row covers 1.7 years, so it is ranked. Pierre Trudeau's terms show 2.9% and 0.6%, and 2.3% together; his first term is 11.1 of his 15.4 years. King's show 6.4%, 3.0% and 4.6%, and 4.7% together; his third term is 13.1 of his 21.4 years.

Five rows are listed below the ranking without a rank: Arthur Meighen's second term (1926) at 4.8%, Joe Clark at 2.3%, John Turner at 4.9%, Kim Campbell at 1.5% and Mark Carney at 0.8%. Each rests on less than one year of data, and the yearly figures they draw on also cover months when someone else was in office. John Turner's 4.9%, for example, is the figure for all of 1984, and he was in office for 0.2 of that year. Joe Clark's 2.3% draws on 1979 and 1980, and he was in office for 211 days of 1979 and 62 days of 1980, 0.7 of a year in all.

The test is years of data, not time in office. Mark Carney took office in 2025, the latest full year of data, and was in office for 0.8 of that year. His row joins the ranking once the 2026 figure is out.

The right-hand column uses one test for every Prime Minister. It names two kinds of events. The first is the recessions that Statistics Canada dates. The second is four shocks that Statistics Canada or the Bank of Canada tie to a large change in output: the depression after the First World War (1920 to 1921), the Great Depression, the Second World War and the COVID-19 pandemic. Each is listed on every term it overlaps by three months or more. Recoveries, commodity price swings, population changes and government decisions are not listed, so some rows are blank. Combined rows carry no comment.

Two examples show the test at work. Oil and other commodity prices fell in 2014 and 2015; a Bank of Canada simulation put GDP about 1% lower by the end of 2015 than it would otherwise have been. That is a price swing, not a dated recession, so it is not listed. The population grew 2.8% in the year to July 1, 2023 and 2.8% again in the year to July 1, 2024, and Statistics Canada noted that GDP per person trended lower as population growth outpaced output growth. Population change is not an event of this kind, so it is not listed either. Sources for every comment are in the source list at the end of the web version of this issue.

Because growth has slowed, recent Prime Ministers of both parties rank lower partly because of when they governed. We tested a ranking that compares each year with its decade's average instead (for the 1920s, the average of 1920 to 1929, including the years before the chart starts).

The ends do not move: Mackenzie King's first term stays first, and R.B. Bennett and Arthur Meighen stay last. The middle does:

We kept the plain ranking, for three reasons. When one Prime Minister governed most of a decade, that decade's average is mostly his own record, so the adjusted figure largely compares him with himself: Mackenzie King held office for most of the 1940s, and Justin Trudeau for most of 2020 to 2025. Its 1920s figures rest on Urquhart's estimates. And other reasonable adjustments put the middle in a different order. Adjusting for United States growth has its own problem: for the early rows, the result depends on which historical United States figures are used. With one series, Arthur Meighen's first term moves from last to a tie for 6th.

A rank puts the numbers in order. It does not show who caused them.

Real GDP comes from two Statistics Canada tables made at different times, joined at 1961 using the 1960 to 1961 growth from a third table, and from Urquhart's estimates, joined at 1926. Each older piece is scaled to meet the newer one and keeps its own year-to-year growth. Older estimates were made with other methods and base years, so a single year can differ by more than a point between versions. Population comes from two Statistics Canada tables joined at 1971, the year Statistics Canada changed how it estimates the population.

Recent years get revised. Statistics Canada first reported that GDP per person fell 1.3% in 2023 and 1.4% in 2024; with today's revised figures, this series shows a fall of 0.8% in each year. Both versions show two years of decline.

More on the method: How the charts work

Who we are: About Gov Scoreboard

Spot an error? Write to [email protected].

Adapted from Statistics Canada, Tables 36-10-0104-01, 36-10-0277-01, 36-10-0137-01, 17-10-0005-01 and 17-10-0063-01 (retrieved 2026-09-29). This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.

Growth up to 1926: M.C. Urquhart, "New Estimates of Gross National Product, Canada, 1870-1926" (NBER, 1986), Table 2.9.

Dates in office: House of Commons, Procedure and Practice (4th ed., 2025), Appendix 6.

Gov Scoreboard