Province pledges to assist with job training
A major new jobs training program aimed at helping Alberta workers adapt to a changing economy will be announced in the coming weeks.
On Thursday, provincial Finance Minister Travis Toews said Albertans should “stay tuned” for an official announcement on the Alberta Jobs Now program, which is expected to provide a grant to eligible employers to provide Albertans opportunities to upgrade their skills as well as to encourage employers to create jobs to get unemployed Albertans back to work.
Details on the size and scale of the initiative have yet to be announced. Thursday's provincial budget dedicates $136 million over three years to the program, but Toews suggested there will also be a sizable federal contribution.
“We're excited about the program,” Toews told reporters. “The Jobs Now program will be an important program that will provide on-the-job training for Albertans. And we know that's going to be critical in economic recovery, critical as we see our economy change and transition over time.”
Mike Holden, chief economist with the Business Council of Alberta, said his organization had been looking for the provincial budget to support Albertans facing unemployment through skill development and training — not just to limit the consequences of long-term unemployment but also to ensure all Albertans have the opportunity to contribute to the needs of a changing economy.
Holden said there are literally thousands of open jobs in Alberta right now, waiting for the right skilled applicants in fields from technology to agriculture. But many Albertans need assistance updating or enhancing their skill sets to access those jobs.
“(The Jobs Now program) appears to be a positive step in that direction,” Holden said. “We're kind of waiting to see what that looks like, but the direction of it is positive.”
The Edmonton Chamber of Commerce also praised the inclusion of a jobs program in the budget.
“Jobs are the key to our economic recovery. We know that and the government knows that,” president and CEO Janet Riopel said in an interview. “We've got to get people back to work and we've got to get them skilled and re-skilled. We certainly have called for providing employers with more help, more financial assistance, so they can hire people and train people.”
However, Riopel said she was disappointed to see no significant investments in post-secondary education, as she said Alberta cannot effectively diversify its economy or re-skill its population without strong, modernized post-secondary programs.
“We've got to retrain our workforce … and we've got to make sure our post-secondaries are strong and able to deliver on that for this new economy that we're facing,” said Riopel.
The jobs program is a key plank in the UCP'S 2021/22 economic recovery plan, as outlined in Thursday's budget. The government will spend $3.1 billion on measures aimed at helping the Alberta economy recover from the double whammy of the global oil price crash and the COVID-19 pandemic. Included in that funding will be $1.5 billion over three years for “strategic investments” in specific economic sectors, including technology, tourism, aviation, aerospace, pharmaceuticals, energy, financial technology and agriculture.
“We're really pleased to see there is a sector-specific strategy to fuel the longer-term recovery,” said Murray Sigler, interim CEO of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce. “While economic recovery may well occur, and hopefully does occur over the next three to four years, it's going to be economic growth in jobs that belong to a new economy that is very technology-driven and that cuts across all sectors.”
The government is also setting aside $500 million in contingency funding in 2021-22 for “further economic recovery initiatives” that may arise during the year.
The provincial economy was hammered in 2020, as GDP growth declined by nearly eight per cent and the unemployment rate hit 11.4 per cent — up from seven per cent in 2019, pre-pandemic.
However, Toews said the start of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout is creating reason for optimism and economic projections are improving. The province now expects Alberta's economy to reach PRE-COVID levels by 2022, one year earlier than the government's mid-year forecasts predicted.
For 2021, the government is expecting economic growth of 4.8 per cent and overall employment is expected to increase by 4.2 per cent. The unemployment rate in the province is expected to decline by one-and-a-half percentage points in the year ahead, to 9.9 per cent.