ALBERTA LOSES 14,000 JOBS
Province left out of July employment uptick as Edmonton hit hard
Edmonton and Alberta were left out of a national uptick in employment last month, according to July jobs numbers released Friday by Statistics Canada.
Alberta shed 14,000 jobs in July, 4,000 of which were in the Edmonton area.
While Canadian unemployment dropped 0.2 percentage points in July from the previous month to 6.3 per cent, Alberta unemployment sits at 7.8 per cent, up 0.4 percentage points from last month.
Is the dip just a blip, or part of a trend? Alberta’s finance minister is optimistic:
“In the big picture, (with) 43,000 full-time jobs since the low of last year this time, we’re going to keep pushing on the economic recovery,” Joe Ceci said.
Edmonton and Calgary had among the highest unemployment rates in Canadian cities measured in July, both sitting at 8.5 per cent. About 70,000 people in the Edmonton area are out of work.
The jobless rate in Edmonton rose from 7.9 per cent in June, but Calgary saw an improvement, with unemployment falling from 8.9 per cent.
Although the jobs lost in Edmonton were all part-time, it’s the second consecutive month the city has seen the numbers slide, said John Rose, chief economist for the City of Edmonton.
“I was not expecting employment to fall significantly in that period,” Rose said.
The numbers deviate from a longer-term trend of improvement in Alberta. Unemployment in the province is down 1.5 percentage points from this time last year, with 35,000 more jobs.
The statistics are a mismatch with what Sharlene Massie sees from the front lines, matching job seekers with prospective employers. The CEO of About Staffing said the agency has plenty of job postings coming in, and workers are getting snapped up quickly. Some job-seekers don’t even show up for interviews — they’ve already been hired elsewhere.
“It just doesn’t feel as bad as the numbers are showing,” she said.
There are other hopeful signs for Edmonton’s economy, Rose said.
While part-time jobs fell, the number of full-time jobs rose in the city. Those jobs are also in higher-paying sectors such as manufacturing and construction, which is driving up average weekly earnings.
Growing vehicle sales in Alberta and Edmonton’s relatively stable housing market also signal consumer confidence, he said.
Although financial and educational services jobs took a hit, Rose said Edmonton jobs in health and education should grow as the year progresses — assuming the provincial government avoids cutbacks.
He foresees the unemployment rate slowly decreasing through 2017.
“It’s not going to be anything like what we experienced between 2010 and 2014. We’re not going back to the boom years, but positive growth for the city and for the region.”
Ceci said diversifying Alberta’s economy and investing in construction projects is working, slowly and steadily.
He wouldn’t speculate about why unemployment rose in Edmonton, saying he needed to look at the data more closely.
In July, Alberta gained 3,600 jobs in oil and gas, mining, forestry and fishing, and 5,400 in retail and wholesale trade, according to StatsCan.
Although the province shed 1,800 construction jobs, the number of business, building and support jobs were up by 6,800.
The biggest losses in Alberta were in educational services (down 18,400 jobs) and health care and social services (down 6,300 jobs).