From storefronts and offices to industrial shops and service providers, employers from all corners of the region are being asked about workforce needs, business challenges and future planning as part of the annual summer-long initiative.
“We try to capture the current snapshot of the business economic landscape every year,” said Lucas Chiarelli, co-ordinator of Niagara Employment Inventory (NEI). “Having this data that gives us that year-over-year change is really important. Also, it’s able to help us react at a quicker pace to any economic changes.”
Niagara has conducted the inventory program every May through August since 2016. Five post-secondary students endeavour to visit every business in the region, with public facing interest or signage welcoming the public.
In 2025, the NEI team inventoried 13,728 businesses, receiving 12,493 responses — its highest completion rate at 91 per cent.
“We use Stats Canada (sic) as the main source for economic development data. However, to fill the gap, we typically use the Niagara Employment Inventory data because that will give us annual, on-the-ground, up to date (information),” said Chiarelli.
The NEI data provides the location and other details of 146,879 full- and part-time jobs from participating businesses. In 2025, sectors with the highest percentage of jobs were retail trade (17 per cent), education services (15 per cent) and accommodation and food services (14 per cent).
The highest percentage of businesses were retail trade (22 per cent), accommodation and food services (15 per cent) and other services (14 per cent), such as repair and maintenance, personal care, laundry services and funeral services.
Chiarelli said the top sectors were the same for the fourth consecutive year, with Niagara’s overall employment numbers remaining “pretty consistent.”
In the 2025 data, about 661 businesses inventoried were no longer in operation or vacant, with retail trade, accommodation and food services and other services the sectors seeing the most closures.
Over the same period, about 442 new businesses were identified and added to the inventory, with 132 of those businesses opening in 2025. The top sectors for new businesses were accommodation and food services, retail trade and other services.
Chiarelli said the NEI questionnaire includes a core set of questions about employee numbers, types of employment and confirming business contact information. But each year, it adds questions stemming from current trends or economic conditions.
Last summer, those questions were about import and export activities and foreign or international ownership to better understand the impact of U.S. tariffs on Niagara. The data collected helped support the 2025 Niagara Support Local Campaign.
“They could go onto that website and very easily find a Niagara-based business to participate in that program,” said Sean Norman, Niagara Region’s manager of strategic initiatives. “It never would have been possible for us to do the Buy Local campaign or have that website without this comprehensive source of data.”
For the 2026 survey, new questions address succession planning and defence sector involvement — a specific response to the push by the federal government toward defence spending.
“We like to connect on what’s going on in the bigger picture whether it be in the province or in the country and make sure our businesses are connected to the bigger picture,” he said.
Some data is made public while other subsets are circulated to municipal economic development offices, chambers of commerce, Brock University and Niagara College.
Norman said data has been used to facilitate analysis and support projects such as the south Niagara Falls hospital business directory and an initiative with Golden Horseshoe Food and Farming Alliance.
“When you know you have a new business that’s coming to the region and we’re trying to sell Niagara region as the place for them to locate … we are very able to quickly tell them about what the supply chain is, what the advantages are for locating in Niagara,” said Norman.
“That’s one of the biggest things that our economic department talks about is the business attraction and the role that has in this.”
Although participation is voluntary, Chiarelli said the survey seeks feedback on business concerns and the types of support businesses need.
Since 2023, business exposure (17 per cent) has been the top issue, followed by taxes and utilities (12 per cent) and infrastructure/traffic issues/construction (11 per cent).
“This is their opportunity to tell us what they need and I think that’s a great benefit for growing that relationship between business and local government,” said Chiarelli.
The students are trained to connect businesses to the proper department when they hear concerns about such things as garbage collection, infrastructure and sewage.
“Secondary to why we’re doing this, but it is a tool that allows for very quick two-way communication. I know, over the years, there’s a lot of issues that we’ve been able to resolve just because we’ve had someone out there,” said Norman.