Calgary’s jobless rate second highest in country

Calgary’s unemployment rate moved slightly higher in August, according to a new survey released by Statistics Canada on Friday.

The rate sits at 8.2 per cent, up from 7.9 per cent in July, leaving Calgary with the second highest unemployment rate in the country behind St. John’s, N.L. And while experts warn that comparing rates month to month can be misleading, University of Calgary economics professor Trevor Tombe said Calgary’s trend is concerning.

“(The unemployment rate) has been a pretty disappointing trend recently,” he said. “Calgary has now been consistently deviating from the unemployment rates which are declining in the rest of the province.”

Tombe also notes that males under the age of 25 continue to have low employment rates, and that this group “really hasn’t seen much recovery at all,” since Alberta’s recession.

While Calgary’s unemployment rates remain high, employment in Alberta increased by 16,000 and the unemployment rate for the province remained steady at 6.7 per cent. According to experts, this is a good thing and suggests that more people are joining the labour force and looking for work.

“The unemployment rate is really just an indication of the number of people looking for work,” said Todd Hirsch, chief economist at ATB Financial. “For Alberta, this was actually a really strong report, statistically one of the strongest months we’ve seen in a long time.”

As for why Calgary’s unemployment rates continue to remain high relative to the rest of the province, experts agree the city was hit harder in some ways during the recession than other cities in Alberta, such as

Edmonton, where the unemployment rate sits at 6.4 per cent.

“Calgary ’s economy compared to Edmonton is more private-sector driven, but Edmonton’s economy has the public-sector base and that’s allowed them to be a little bit more even-keeled through this,” said Court Ellingson, vice-president of Calgary Economic Development.

There’s no doubt that recovery is happening and things are getting better.

“Oil companies are also still very reluctant to be hiring head office workers and Calgary’s strength is in that head office,” he said.

“As (oil companies) start to get their feet back under them, you’ll start to see more field work and Edmonton is more positioned in that regard.”

Despite this, Ellingson is confident the economy will turn around.

“Calgarians should be very hopeful but should be understanding that it’s not a one month, two month, or three-month thing that we’re going through,” he said. “This is a longer-term structural change to our economy.”

Tombe echoes Ellingson’s hopeful note about the future of Calgary’s economy.

“There’s no doubt that recovery is happening and things are getting better,” he said, adding that the city’s peak unemployment is still lower than what it was during the recession.

“Whether it’s happening as quickly as we’d like, that’s a separate question.”

As for the rest of the country, the jobless rate hit six per cent in August, up from its 5.8 per cent reading in July. Ontario experienced the biggest decrease of the provinces with a loss of 80,100 jobs — almost all of which were part-time. This pushed its unemployment rate up to 7.7 per cent, from 5.4 per cent.