Most “moving to Fredericton” pages are written to sell you the place. This one is written to help you decide, which means it includes the parts that would put some people off. If you are going to move your family 1,000 kilometres, you should know both halves.
Every figure below was checked against government sources in August 2026, and where a number could not be verified I have left it out rather than guessed.
The short version
Fredericton is the provincial capital, so the largest employment sector is public administration rather than any single company. It is a small city — 63,116 people in the 2021 Census, about 108,610 across the wider metropolitan area — with two universities, a community college, a regional hospital and Canada’s second-largest military base 25 minutes away.
Housing costs materially less than most of Canada. Wages are about 8% below the national average. And primary healthcare access is a genuine, documented problem. Those three facts together decide whether this move works for you.
What it costs to live here
There is no official index saying Fredericton is X% cheaper than Canada. Statistics Canada measures how prices change over time, not the difference in price levels between cities, so anyone quoting you a tidy percentage is using a commercial estimate. Here are the real numbers instead.
| Item | Figure |
|---|---|
| HST | 15% — 5% federal, 10% provincial |
| Provincial income tax | 9.4% to $52,333 · 14% to $104,666 · 16% to $193,861 · 19.5% above |
| NB basic personal amount, 2026 | $13,664 |
| Electricity | 15.84¢/kWh plus $30.82/month service charge (urban) |
| Average auto insurance premium, NB 2025 | $1,252 |
| Fredericton residential property tax, 2026 | $1.3086 per $100 of assessment (inside the city) |
Electricity went up this year, twice. The Energy and Utilities Board approved a 4.29% increase effective 14 April 2026, on top of a variance account charge from 1 April — roughly $10.37 a month more for a household using 1,350 kWh. Statistics Canada measured New Brunswick electricity prices up 4.4% year over year in July 2026.
Auto insurance is rising too. Several insurers were granted double-digit increases in 2025, and the New Brunswick Insurance Board reports auto theft claims up 228% since 2014.
A property tax warning specific to 2026. The province froze assessed values at 2025 levels for roughly 430,000 properties — but for one year only. Do not build a long-term budget on a frozen assessment. And if you are buying, note that Service New Brunswick’s spike protection excludes properties that sold in the previous year, so the seller’s tax bill is not the one you will receive. Buying a home in Fredericton explains this properly.
What you will earn
This is the trade-off, stated plainly.
| New Brunswick | Canada | |
|---|---|---|
| Average weekly earnings, May 2026 | $1,228.55 | $1,337.77 |
| Unemployment, July 2026 | 7.0% | 6.4% |
| Labour productivity per hour, 2024 | $50.40 | $63.20 |
New Brunswick earnings run about 8% below the national average. Greater Fredericton does better than the province on employment — 6.3% unemployment in 2025 against the provincial 7.1% — and the Fredericton–Oromocto area added 1,300 jobs in 2025.
Median household income in the Fredericton metropolitan area was $79,000 in the 2021 Census, average $95,600. Those are 2020 income years and are now dated.
If you are moving with a remote job at a Toronto or Vancouver salary, the arithmetic here is very good. If you are moving and job-hunting locally, budget on the lower number.
Who is actually hiring
Fredericton is a government town before it is anything else. In the Fredericton region, public administration employs about 11,895 people — more than health care and social assistance (9,325), retail (7,915) or education (6,575).
- 5th Canadian Division Support Base Gagetown in Oromocto — roughly 6,500 military and 1,000 civilian personnel. If this is your reason for moving, see CFB Gagetown relocation.
- Horizon Health Network — over 15,000 employees province-wide; the Dr. Everett Chalmers is one of its four regional hospitals.
- Anglophone School District West — 70 schools and over 3,465 staff district-wide.
- Universities and college — UNB (over 10,600 students across both campuses), St. Thomas, and NBCC (12,881 learners in 2024–25).
- Knowledge Park and the tech sector — six buildings, 40 companies, over 800 employees, with 60+ R&D organisations in the surrounding innovation district. Radian6 sold to Salesforce and Q1 Labs to IBM out of this city.
No official source publishes a ranked list of Fredericton’s largest employers with headcounts, so you will not find one here.
Healthcare — read this before you commit
This is the single biggest reason a move here goes wrong, and it is the thing relocation pages skip.
The Government of New Brunswick’s own figures: in 2025, 73% of residents had a family doctor or nurse practitioner — meaning roughly one in four had none. Only 34% of those with a provider could be seen within five days. The share with a provider has fallen from 93% in 2017 to 79% in 2023 to 73% in 2025. In February 2026 the primary care waitlist was reported to have grown by 40,000 in a single year.
Two practical consequences for anyone arriving from another province:
1. There is a Medicare waiting period. Coverage begins on the first day of the third month after you establish permanent residence. Keep your former province’s coverage running for up to three months. (One exception: spouses and dependants of Regular Force CAF members get first-day coverage.)
2. You cannot join the patient registry before you arrive. Registration requires a valid New Brunswick Medicare card and NB residence. The registry is now NB Health Link — nbhealthlink.ca, or 1-833-354-2300. Some government pages still describe the older Patient Connect NB; that page has not been updated since 2023.
What exists in the meantime:
- Virtual Care NB — covered by Medicare, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week, by video, phone or chat. Access through Tele-Care 811.
- Fredericton Urgent Treatment Centre, 435 Brookside Drive inside Brookside Mall — walk-in, no appointments, Monday to Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. only, X-ray on site.
- The Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital emergency department, 24 hours. Horizon does not publish live wait times.
The province reports progress — 15 collaborative care clinics open as of May 2026 against a commitment of 30 by 2028, and 67 net new physicians in the year to April 2026, the largest net increase on record. It is moving in the right direction. It is not fixed.
Housing
To rent: CMHC’s October 2025 survey put Fredericton’s vacancy rate at 2.5% — tighter than the 3.1% national average — with average rent $1,430, up 5.1% year over year. For scale, average rent was $981 in 2020 and $738 in 2010.
To buy: the MLS® Home Price Index benchmark for the Fredericton region in July 2026 was $361,100. The 21 sub-areas around the city run from about $201,100 to $548,800 — a 2.7× spread inside one commute. Full table on Fredericton neighbourhoods.
Supply is finally moving. 2025 was Fredericton’s biggest development year on record: $359.4 million in building permits and 1,564 new housing units, against a previous record of 938. Ninety per cent of it was townhouses and apartments. In July 2026 governments committed $23.5 million to water and wastewater infrastructure on Doak Road, unlocking 44 hectares and enabling over 1,300 more homes.
The honest caveat: the provincial benchmark price rose about 85% in five years. Record construction has not yet loosened the market, and long-time residents and recent arrivals experience this city very differently as a result.
Schools
Fredericton is served by Anglophone School District West — 70 schools, 24,765 students. Registration runs through the district, split into kindergarten and Grades 1–12 pathways.
French immersion has two entry points, Grade 1 and Grade 6. Applications for 2026–27 opened in January 2026. Provincial policy bars admitting an already French-speaking or bilingual student into immersion in an English school.
Francophone schools — École des Bâtisseurs, École Les Éclaireurs, École Sainte-Anne and École Arc-en-ciel — are governed by section 23 of the Charter. This is not open enrolment; a family without section 23 rights generally cannot choose a francophone school.
The district does not publish catchment maps. Confirm the assigned school for a specific civic address through its BusPlanner tool before you commit to a house — it is the single most common thing relocating families get wrong here.
Getting here, and getting around
Fredericton International Airport handled 377,346 passengers in 2024, up 13%, with four airlines and around 44 departures a week. Air Canada runs multiple daily flights to Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa; Porter and seasonal sun carriers also serve the airport. There are no non-stop flights to the United States — you connect through Toronto, Montreal or Ottawa.
There is no passenger rail. VIA Rail’s Ocean crosses New Brunswick three days a week but does not stop in Fredericton. Maritime Bus provides intercity coach service.
Transit is real but thin. Cash fare $3.00 exact change, adult monthly pass $85, student pass $60, seniors $65 a year. Ridership hit 1.809 million trips in 2025, up 13%. But:
- Sunday service is one crosstown route, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
- Routes 18 and 20 are on-demand only, and only weekdays 6:30–10:30 a.m. and 3:30–7:30 p.m. Outside those windows there is no service on them.
- A new Route 300 Campus Connect started in June 2026, linking UNB with the hospital, Regent Mall and Corbett Centre.
I am not going to tell you whether you need a car, because no official source says so. Read the service levels above and decide for your own household.
Winter, and the spring freshet
Rather than quote averages, here is how the city actually operates in winter. Streets are plowed within 24 hours of a storm ending and sidewalks within 48, on a three-tier street and four-tier sidewalk priority system. Overnight street parking is banned from midnight to 7 a.m. right through to 31 May — which tells you more about the season here than any temperature chart.
The Saint John River freshet is a genuine annual event. The province runs River Watch from March to May with a four-tier alert system. Fredericton requires new construction in flood zones to place living spaces at a minimum 9-metre elevation, and has spent two decades raising roads, enlarging culverts, fitting backflow valves, building berms and buying out flood-prone riverbank properties.
Before you buy anywhere near the water, check the address on the City’s Neighbourhood Flood Risk Portal and the provincial flood hazard maps. I do this on every riverside property as a matter of course — see downtown Fredericton and Lincoln for how it plays out in specific areas.
If you are immigrating
The Multicultural Association of Fredericton is the main settlement organisation — language training, orientation, employment support including foreign credential recognition, and settlement workers in schools. (506) 454-8292.
Provincial immigration has tightened sharply in 2026, and this is not widely reported. From 4 May 2026, New Brunswick Skilled Worker invitations under the New Brunswick Experience pathway are limited to healthcare, education and construction because of limited remaining allocation. From 3 February 2026 the province paused new employer designations under the Atlantic Immigration Program and closed numerous occupation codes. If your plan depends on a provincial nomination, verify your occupation is still eligible before you commit to anything.
There is no cash incentive for individuals moving to New Brunswick. If you have seen one advertised, it is not a provincial programme.
The things people do not tell you
All of this is from Statistics Canada or the Government of New Brunswick.
- The population is no longer growing. New Brunswick’s population declined 0.1% in the first quarter of 2026. Immigration was down 21.1% year over year, and net interprovincial migration has come to an end. Deaths have exceeded births for eleven consecutive years.
- Wages sit about 8% below the national average, and provincial labour productivity is well below it.
- Primary care is the weak point, and the waitlist grew rather than shrank last year.
- The economy is unusually trade-exposed — 90.2% of New Brunswick exports go to the United States, the highest share of any province.
- Poverty is real: 9.9% provincially in 2023, 11.3% for children.
- The assessment freeze is temporary, and electricity costs are rising.
I would rather you read that here than discover it in year two. Plenty of people move here and are glad they did — but they tend to be the ones who arrived with clear eyes about the trade.
Where to live
Once you have decided the city works, the next question is which part. The spread is wide enough that the answer genuinely changes your budget.
- Fredericton neighbourhoods — 21 areas with current benchmark prices.
- Downtown — walkable, oldest housing stock, most flood exposure.
- College Hill — the universities and the hospital on foot.
- Oromocto — the base town, and not the cheap option.
- New Maryland and Hanwell — the commuter villages, one fully serviced and one entirely on wells and septic.
- Lincoln — three places share the name, in two municipalities.
Where to go from here
- Buying a home in Fredericton — deposits, conditions, closing costs and land transfer tax.
- First-time home buyers — every federal and provincial programme, with 2026 figures.
- CFB Gagetown relocation — if you are being posted here.
- Fredericton real estate market — sales, inventory and benchmark prices for all 33 sub-areas, updated monthly.
- Rural and acreage properties — wells, septic, radon, the 15-acre financing rule and the half-hectare tax cap.
- Fredericton real estate FAQ — the shorter questions.
- Get in touch — I answer my own phone, and I am used to different time zones.
Every figure on this page was verified against Statistics Canada, Government of New Brunswick, City of Fredericton, CMHC or CREA sources in August 2026. Where I could not verify something on an official source, I left it out. Figures change; ask me and I will tell you what is current.
