Jobless face growing wait for work
Time spent on unemployment line has nearly tripled for Albertans
When Wally Fong was let go from his job in April after 20 years with the same company, he decided it was time to make a change.
Fong was an operations manager at Rogers before being laid off along with about 25 employees who worked under him. With a dwindling list of job prospects in the industry, Fong says he’s been looking outside his field of expertise to find steady work.
“I am in a total career-change mode right now,” he said. “I’m literally looking in a different industry, a different everything.”
Fong, a father of two who is also a reservist in the Canadian Forces, said he’s been lucky and hasn’t needed a financial boost from employment insurance.
But relying on government assistance is a reality for many unemployed Albertans, and new data shows time spent on the unemployment line has nearly tripled over the past decade.
In a report released Wednesday by the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, economist Ron Kneebone found that in October 2008, unemployed Albertans spent an average of 7.4 weeks out of work.
Kneebone says that number jumped to nearly 21 weeks in 2018, due mostly to the 2008 financial crisis and the dropping price of oil in 2014.
Kneebone didn’t offer answers on how to get Albertans back to work, but said social assistance and employment insurance should be better aligned with the increased average time spent unemployed.
“If you’ve been a regular employee working full time you can collect up to 38 weeks (employment insurance). If you’ve been more of a part-time employee you only get to collect 15 weeks,” Kneebone said.
“It’s quite likely that a lot of people are not going to survive their EI benefits — your EI benefits will run out prior to you finding re-employment.”
The report showed there are 56,000 Albertans on social assistance, roughly double the number in 2008. Kneebone said most are single, unmarried Albertans who “are only getting ... $627 a month to try to survive.”
While Alberta’s GDP and the unemployment rate are recovering, Kneebone urged the province to take steps to better support unemployed Albertans who are either struggling to find work or are retraining.
“The economy tends to be recovering, but that’s not true for everyone. There are people who are being left behind and they are going onto social assistance, they are being left on unemployment for a long period of time.”
Kneebone said the province might be able to take cues from Ottawa depending on how it responds to the closure of General Motors’ Oshawa, Ont., plant announced earlier this week.
“I’m anticipating they are going to come up with different ways of supporting those workers, I think it’ll be interesting to see if that same support is provided in Alberta for oil workers,” he said.
Advocating for increased spending or supports for those on social assistance programs would contradict suggestions made last week by Trevor Tombe, of the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, who advocated the province reduce spending by $1 for every $6 spent.
But Kneebone said Tombe’s report highlighted a budgetary problem, not a “spending or revenue problem.”
Kneebone suspects the majority of those on social assistance are unemployed “young men from the oil sector,” adding the province and federal governments “know who’s falling on social assistance “and “know who’s collecting EI.”
He urged politicians to look at what demographics are “being left behind” and assist with re-employment and “reallocate spending ” to assist with retraining programs to help Albertans get back to work in new fields.
“The higher it goes, the less likely you are to find re-employment,” Kneebone said of the duration of unemployment.
“And that’s simply because your skills deteriorate — you’re viewed in the market as a less-attractive employee if you’ve been unemployed for half a year versus if you’ve been unemployed for a month.”
Now more than 30 weeks without steady work, Fong said he’s been able to pick up some side work to keep money coming in and his skills sharp while looking for a permanent job.
Fong said he’s not in favour of the government taking on the brunt of retraining workers, but added there are job training opportunities and programs in the private and public sectors available to Albertans.
“I don’t think people are going to turn down a government program,” he said. “There’s a demand, but the biggest thing is awareness. Enough people just don’t know.”
For more information on Alberta’s income, housing and social assistance supports visit www.alberta.ca. You can also look at the province’s employment services options online for more details on finding job training programs.
Requests for comment from the province were not immediately returned.