Nearly 80 per cent of Canada's past year job gains were in one province: Alberta

Alberta is home to roughly 12 per cent of Canada's population, but it accounted for close to 80 per cent of all the jobs the national economy created in the past year, according to Statistics Canada.

Alberta added nearly 80,000 jobs in the past 12 months, while all of Canada added 99,000, the national agency said in its latest jobs report.

Alberta's total looms large partly because it kept hiring while some of the country's biggest provinces shed workers.

"It's not like we have an acceleration in our job creation rate," said Charles St-Arnaud, chief economist at Servus Credit Union in Calgary.

"Alberta continues to hum along at about the same rhythm. What you're seeing is continuing underperformance in the rest of the country."

Quebec and British Columbia shed a total of 67,000 jobs in the past 12 months, Statistics Canada reported last week.

Employers in Ontario were hiring, with employment picking up by close to 65,000 positions, but that's a modest gain of less than one per cent for the country's largest province.

The story in Alberta is not just that the province is pulling ahead. It is why. Alberta is where Canadians are moving, and the jobs are following the people.

The pull is affordability. The average home in the Toronto area now costs over a million dollars; in Alberta's two largest cities, it is far less. "I can see the temptation for Calgary and Edmonton," St-Arnaud said.

Brendon Bernard, a senior economist at the job site Indeed in Toronto, sees the same draw. Alberta pay is still strong, he said, and paired with better housing costs, it keeps pulling people from British Columbia and southern Ontario.

Jobs in health care, social assistance

A growing population needs to be looked after, and that is where most of the new work is. Of the roughly 80,000 jobs added over the year, about 55,000 were in health care and social assistance, a category St-Arnaud notes is wide, covering far more than hospital staff.

"Growing population, aging population," he said. "You need doctors, you need nurses. You need the services to support that population."

This is genuine, full-time work. Full-time employment rose 58,500 over the year, the bulk of the gain. But it is mostly a response to how many people are arriving, not a sign that Alberta's core industries are booming.

Bernard makes the same point. Health care and public administration are carrying the province, he said. "Construction, relatively flat. Natural resources, not too much change there either," he said. "Some of the key drivers of the Alberta economy still aren't showing the strength that would come from a stronger economy."

For all its lead, Alberta's job market is not on fire. "The job market has been, in a lot of ways, similar to the rest of Canada," Bernard said. "Stable, but not roaring. More static than robust."

Alberta's seven per cent unemployment rate, he added, "is pretty consistent with that kind of stable picture. But it could be better."

Zoom in on the latest month, for example. Alberta added jobs again, but the gains were all part-time; full-time work actually slipped. The unemployment rate also rose, to seven per cent, even as jobs were added, a combination that usually signals a weakening economy. But here it is the opposite.

"You have more people coming to the province, and you're not necessarily employed from day one," St-Arnaud said. "They increase the number of job seekers. So it's not necessarily problematic, per se." The province is drawing workers faster than even a healthy job market can absorb, so the rate climbs even as jobs are added.

A caveat belongs on all of it. The monthly numbers are always volatile, and one June is not a trend. But the shape holds.

People are moving to Alberta for cheaper homes and steady pay, and the province is hiring to keep up with them.

Alberta sees highest employment gains across Canada in June: labour force survey

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