The Invisible Workforce: How Canada’s Caregiving Crisis Is Quietly Bleeding Families Dry

Elizabeth Chambers was 40 years old and at the height of a teaching career she had spent her life building when she walked away from it not because she wanted to, but because there was no one else.

Her mother was slipping away to Alzheimer’s. Her son needed constant support for lifelong learning disabilities. The classroom she loved could not wait for her, and her family could not wait either. So she chose family, and the career was gone.

“It was one of the hardest decisions,” said Chambers, now 46. “I was very proud to be in the field of education, and I was proud that that was who I was.”

Her story is not unusual. Across Canada, an invisible workforce of millions mostly women, often middle-aged, frequently without adequate support or compensation are quietly absorbing a care crisis that the country’s health and social systems have neither the capacity nor the funding to address alone.

A sweeping new survey by the Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence (CCCE) has put hard numbers behind what many families have long known: caregiving is a financial emergency dressed up as a personal obligation.

Nearly six in ten caregivers (59 per cent) are trying to hold down jobs while managing their caregiving duties a balancing act that is taking a measurable toll. More than a third (36 per cent) said their productivity has suffered and their earnings have taken a direct hit. Close to half (49 per cent) reported outright financial strain, with one in five spending more than $12,000 out of pocket every single year.

Chambers is part of what researchers call the “sandwich generation” Canadians, typically between 40 and 60, caught between caring for aging parents and children who still need them. It is a cohort defined not by choice but by circumstance.

“People don’t know what our lives are like until they live them,” she said.

For Pamela Barkhouse of Halifax, the financial reckoning arrived slowly and then all at once.

She was 45 when her father was diagnosed with both Alzheimer’s and lung cancer. Four years later, after he passed away, her mother developed cancer. Barkhouse took early retirement to care for her a decision that felt right at the time but carved a decade-long hole in her employment record.

“At the age of 60, when people start to think about drawing CPP, I then realised being out of the workforce for well over 10 years, the hit was huge,” she said. “You have not made a contribution to CPP, therefore you’re penalised for that lack of employment years.”

The couple had modest dreams: some boating, occasional travel, a slower life together. Those plans evaporated. “That financial plan went out the window,” Barkhouse said.

Orlena Broome’s situation adds another layer of complexity. An immigrant from Barbados who arrived in Canada in 1984, she quit her job when her son was eight to focus on his care needs. Eight years later, she re-entered the workforce but the market had moved on without her.

“I began again at the entry-level salary,” she said, “but it was still better than the zero salary I was getting as an unpaid caregiver.”

She has no regrets about her choice. But she carries a clear-eyed view of its costs. The financial impact of caregiving, she said, compounds over time especially when special needs are involved. Extra expenses for formula, equipment, therapy, and adaptations mount quickly on a household suddenly running on one income.

According to the CCCE report, at least half of all Canadians will take on a caregiving role at some point in their lives. Together, they contribute an estimated $97 billion in unpaid labour each year a figure that represents a foundational subsidy to a health and social care system that would collapse without it.

“It is becoming unaffordable to care for our loved ones,” said Liv Mendelsohn, executive director of the CCCE.

That affordability crisis is accelerating. Canada is in the midst of its largest-ever retirement wave, with all baby boomers set to hit retirement age by 2030. By 2024, two-thirds of all boomers had already crossed that threshold. As the demographic scales tip, the share of working-age Canadians available to fund health expenditures is shrinking, even as demand surges.

Statistics Canada projects that people aged 65 and over will make up nearly 23 per cent of the population by 2035, up from 16 per cent in 2015. Desjardins economists have flagged healthcare spending as the single biggest risk to Canada’s long-term fiscal stability.

The caregiving load does not fall equally. Barkhouse, who has become an advocate on the issue, points to national caregiver statistics that make the disparity unmistakable: the responsibility overwhelmingly lands on women.

Women are more likely to reduce their hours, decline promotions, leave jobs entirely, and absorb the lifetime financial consequences smaller pensions, lower CPP payouts, reduced savings of years spent outside the formal economy.

Meanwhile, the professional care sector meant to share that burden is buckling. More than three-quarters of paid care workers are considering leaving the profession due to low wages and safety concerns, according to the CCCE. That exodus pushes more unpaid responsibility back onto families.

“If we don’t have nurses, my husband and I are staying up,” Chambers said. “That is going to mean we’re now getting a lack of sleep.” Her health, and her ability to keep caregiving, hinges on a system she cannot control.

The Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence is calling for a package of targeted reforms: higher wages and better protections for paid care workers, including migrant workers in the sector; improved access to mental health supports and respite care; simplification of tax credits and benefits for caregivers; and sustained public investment in care infrastructure.

“Our health and social systems depend on unpaid caregivers and underpaid care providers,” Mendelsohn said, “but like the roads, bridges, and buildings we rely on every day, our governments need to invest in this critical infrastructure before it collapses.”

For Chambers, still navigating a life shaped by her caregiving choices, the stakes are not abstract.

“We’re struggling,” she said, “and I would worry about what’s happening next.”