HISTORIC JOBLESS SPIKE
As the economy shut down to smother the COVID-19 pandemic, April unemployment rates in Calgary and Alberta leaped to double digits
The pandemic that grounded much of the country’s air travel caught one Calgary airport worker and hundreds of colleagues in its wake.
The airport security screener was handed a temporary pink slip last month in a wave of layoffs that ultimately claimed more than 300 co-workers.
“I’ve always had steady work. This is already the longest I’ve ever been off the job,” said the man, who said he had to remain anonymous to ensure he can return to his job.
“Even when they start reopening the economy, we’ll probably be some of the last to go back to work because I don’t think a lot of people are going to want to start flying again.”
The worker is one of those caught in a relentless job purge that’s seen Calgary’s official unemployment rate hit 10.8 per cent in April with a loss of 42,700 jobs — a 3.5 percentage point hike from a year ago and 2.2-point hike since March, according to Statistics Canada.
But not included in those numbers is one showing nearly 26,000 people in the Calgary area stopped looking for work last month, the worst figure among larger Canadian centres.
“We are facing a historic challenge from job losses throughout the economy and as distressing as the numbers are the impact on people’s lives goes beyond the statistics,” said Mary Moran, president of Calgary Economic Development.
That has fed into an April national jobless rate of 13 per cent, but the federal number-cruncher said the actual unemployment rate was closer to 17.8 per cent, because 1.1 million idled Canadians weren’t included.
“They were not counted as unemployed but were counted as not in the labour force because they did not look for work, presumably due to ongoing business closures and very limited opportunities to find new work,” said the Statistics Canada report.
In Alberta, hammered by both a dizzying oil price plunge and COVID-19 lockdown, the official unemployment rate reached 13.4 per cent in April, a rise of nearly five percentage points from the previous month.
On Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said a wage subsidy program will be extended beyond June, but the airport screener noted the emergency response benefit he’s receiving is slated to last four months.
“The CERB (Canadian Emergency Response Benefit) can only take you so far with all the tax deductions,” he said. “I’m holding up OK, but I know a lot of people that (unemployment) is getting to them. They’re slipping into depression.”
The hardest hit are those aged 15-24, whose employment fell by 34.2 per cent nationally, while in Alberta it plunged almost 40 per cent over the past year.
In Calgary, the steepest losses were felt by the accommodation and food industry, which shed 9,300 jobs in April.
The oil and gas sector shrank by 7,700 positions from March, with 4,300 of those jobs lost in Alberta.
Those figures are only a snapshot in April and are undoubtedly considerably worse already, said Sandip Lalli, CEO of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce.
“None of these numbers are surprising. We’re all trying to figure out what the floor is,” said Lalli. “We’re still forecasting 400,000 jobs lost by the end of the year and 20 per cent unemployment for Alberta.”
Reopening the economy to reverse some of those job losses will face hurdles of uncertainty lingering from COVID-19, such as a likely rule limiting restaurant and bar occupancy to 50 per cent of normal capacity that will eat into revenues, she said.
“But the larger piece is about consumer confidence: ‘Am I safe?’”
Even so, Ottawa’s extension of its wage subsidy program will help mitigate those losses by bolstering stability and keeping employment afloat, Lalli said. Innovation in areas like the energy sector, health care and agriculture are keys to turning around the economy in the longer run, she added.
And noting the dramatic impact on youth employment, Lalli said, “We have to get them around the table. We’re talking about smart people, university graduates.”
A woman who administers a four-year-old Facebook job recruitment board said she’s seen “a massive increase over the last month in people joining the page looking for work, as well as a dramatic increase in fake accounts trying to take advantage of people looking for work.”
But Dawn Stewart said the most promising areas of hiring appear to be in construction, cleanup crews and remote office jobs.
Moran said there are encouraging signs of companies hiring as the economy prepares to reopen from the lockdown.
Lalli said Calgarians can push that momentum by staying close to home this summer.
“Spend it in your city,” she said.