Among Public Service Alliance of Canada members who have received notice their jobs are at risk and who disclosed their gender, the vast majority are women. Treasury Board has not released its own gender breakdown of workers receiving affected notices.

Women account for 71 per cent of Public Service Alliance of Canada members who have received notice that their jobs may be cut—and for whom gender information is available—even though women only make up roughly 57 per cent of the federal public service, according to new data from the union.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada’s (PSAC) analysis suggests women are shouldering a disproportionate share of the federal government’s ongoing workforce reductions. The cuts are still unfolding, and only a portion of employees who receive notices are ultimately laid off, but the union’s figures offer a rare current look at the gender makeup of workers affected by the reductions.

PSAC said gender information was available for 77 per cent of the more than 14,000 members who have received letters about pending cuts since January 2025. Among members who disclosed their gender, 71 per cent were women.

The current downsizing includes the effects of the government’s comprehensive expenditure review, which is expected to reduce the federal workforce by an estimated 16,000 full-time equivalents by 2028-29. Combined with attrition and earlier reductions, the government projects the public service will shrink to roughly 330,000 employees, about 40,000 below its 2023-24 peak.

The union pointed to several departments with majority-women workforces that have also received large numbers of workforce adjustment notices, including Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), where women make up 67 per cent of employees; Health Canada at 65 per cent; Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) at 64 per cent; and Global Affairs Canada at 57 per cent.

The Treasury Board Secretariat’s (TBS) latest public tracker shows those four departments had issued 8,810 affected letters to employees as of Aug. 5. That represents about 35 per cent of the 25,368 notices reported among the organizations currently included in the tracker. Three of the four departments also had among the highest numbers of affected letters in the TBS’s tracker: Global Affairs had issued 3,309; ESDC 3,028; and Health Canada 2,045. IRCC had issued 428 notices. The tracker does not provide a gender breakdown of affected employees.

A pattern CCPA had already projected

Katherine Scott, director of gender equality and public policy at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), called the 71-per-cent figure significant. In an October 2025 analysis she co-authored with senior economist David Macdonald, the CCPA estimated that roughly 59 per cent of planned federal job cuts would fall on women, based on the representation of women across departments and the different reduction targets facing federal organizations.

The CCPA analysis found that relatively protected organizations—including the Department of National Defence, the Canada Border Services Agency, and the RCMP—had comparatively male-majority workforces. It projected particularly large job losses among women at ESDC, the Public Health Agency of Canada, and Indigenous Services Canada.

The analysis was published before the 2025 budget was released in November. The budget later gave Indigenous Services Canada a lower savings target than many other departments, reducing its exposure to the cuts projected by CCPA.

Scott said the union’s figures were consistent with the disproportionate impact the CCPA had anticipated, although the 71-per-cent figure could change as workforce adjustment continues.

“Yes, women are disproportionately impacted. I think it’s pretty clear evidence,” Scott said.

She said public administration and public services have been an important source of decent, higher-paying work for women, adding broader employment-equity implications to the workforce reductions.

Union pushes for the government’s numbers

In its recent analysis, PSAC called on the federal government to release disaggregated equity data showing how the cuts are affecting women, Indigenous and racialized workers, workers with disabilities, 2SLGBTQIA+ workers, and other equity groups. The union also called on the government to halt notices telling workers their jobs may be cut, and to consult unions before making further decisions it says could disproportionately harm workers.

Tammy Schirle, an economics professor at Wilfrid Laurier University who conducts research on gender inequality and wage disparities in the labour market, said the available data cannot yet establish the eventual gender distribution of job losses.

She noted that gender information is missing for 23 per cent of PSAC members who received affected notices, and said the composition of that group could change the overall percentage.

Schirle also noted that notices outnumber the positions that will ultimately be eliminated through workforce adjustment. She said the process is expected to continue for several years, meaning the current figures may differ from the eventual distribution of job losses.

“I expect the federal government holds more accurate data, and it would be useful to know the demographic impacts,” she said.

Calls for closer equity tracking

The Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) had already raised concerns about the equity effects of the cuts in a February submission requested by the Senate Committee on Human Rights for its study of employment equity in the federal public service.

The commission, which enforces federal employers’ obligations under the Employment Equity Act, said it had heard concerns that racialized and Indigenous workers and people with disabilities could also be disproportionately affected by the reductions.

“The CHRC urges federal public service departments and agencies to work to ensure the process of workforce adjustment does not create or exacerbate EE gaps,” the commission said in its committee submission.

Concerns about whether equity impacts can be tracked while federal cuts are still underway have surfaced before. Following an earlier round of workforce adjustment, the Human Rights Committee recommended in 2013 that TBS improve its collection and public reporting of workforce adjustment data, saying timely information was needed to assess impacts on employment equity.

Similar concerns emerged again during the current reductions. In May, The Hill Times reported that unions and employment-equity advocates were calling for central demographic tracking of the cuts, warning that relying on individual departments could mean disparities are identified too late. TBS told The Hill Times at the time that it did not collect the information centrally, and that deputy heads and human-resources officials were monitoring representation within their own departments.

Government points to future annual reports

Mohammad Kamal, spokesperson for Treasury Board President Shafqat Ali (Brampton–Chinguacousy Park, Ont.), said in a statement toThe Hill Times that departments have the most up-to-date human-resources data needed to monitor representation within their organizations. Kamal also said federal organizations must continue to meet their obligations under the Employment Equity Act as workforce reductions proceed.

The Hill Times asked TBS whether it now holds gender data on employees receiving affected notices, whether comparable information exists for other equity groups, whether the government has conducted a gender or employment-equity analysis of the reductions, and whether it plans to publicly release disaggregated data. Kamal’s statement did not address those questions.

Kamal also said TBS was not in a position to comment on PSAC’s data or methodology.

“However, it is important for readers to note that only a portion of employees who receive affected notices are ultimately laid off,” Kamal said.

Kamal said TBS has reminded deputy heads and senior human-resources officials to monitor representation as staffing decisions are made, and that it will disclose aggregate employment-equity data through its annual reporting.

Gender impact of public service cuts unclear as union finds women overrepresented