Halifax Economic Dashboard

Halifax Economic Snapshot

(Updated: March 2023)

Population

Halifax's population grew by 4.5% between 2021 and 2022, the largest annual increase the city has ever seen, bringing the total to 480,582. This growth rate is the second-fastest across Canada's 35 largest cities, behind only Moncton. International migration accounts for 60% of this growth, with 39% coming from interprovincial migration. Halifax represents 47.1% of Nova Scotia's population and accounts for 72.4% of the growth in the provincial population in 2022.

Home Prices

Between January and February 2023, the average home price in Halifax increased 0.2% to $537,768. This is 10.9% lower than the peak of $603,386 in April 2022. However, having fallen 20.7% from April to the end of 2022, home prices have grown 12.4% since December 2022.

Retail Sales

Retail sales in Nova Scotia increased by 13.0% January 2023 and January 2022. Looking at monthly changes, however, sales declined 20.2% between December 2022 and January 2023. The largest annual increases were recorded for shoe retailers (+76.8%) and other motor vehicle dealers (+59.2%). The largest declines were seen for floor covering, window treatment, and other home furnishing retailers (-6.6%) and supermarkets and other grocery retailers (except convenience stores (-3.9%).

Note: As of the January 2023 reference period, Monthly retail Trade Survey figures are based on the NAICS 2022 classification structure. See more here.

Labour Force Statistics

The unemployment rate for Halifax in February 2023 was 4.6%, one percentage point lower than in February 2022. The total number of jobs increased by 17,200 positions (+7.1%) from a year ago, but was down 1,000 positions (-0.4%) from a month ago. Across industries, other services (except public administration) added the most jobs (+5,000), while the largest declines in employment were seen in the transportation and warehousing, and construction industries (-2,100 each). The vacancy rate remained unchanged from the previous month at 5.2% in February.

Inflation

Halifax saw an annualized inflation rate of 6.3% in February 2023, 0.3 percentage points lower than the previous month but 0.9 percentage points higher than a year ago. Inflation for rented accommodation was 8.2%, which is its highest rate since last July. Inflation rates were 6.5% and 5.2% for Nova Scotia and Canada, respectively.

Commercial Real Estate

Halifax's overall office vacancy rate remained unchanged in Q4 2022 from the previous quarter at 13.3%. This was 1.1 percentage points lower than Q4 2021. Over the same period, average office space rent increased by $0.64 (per sf). The downtown office vacancy rate in Q4 2022 was 18.2%.
The overall industrial space vacancy rate, at 4.1%, declined 0.4 percentage points from Q3 2022, but increased 0.2 percentage points from a year ago. The average gross rent increased $0.85 (per sf) over the year as well.