RESEARCH: May jobs report shows Canada up despite Alberta losing 20,000 jobs

Alberta construction and retail and wholesale trade shed over 27,000 jobs

Canada’s unemployment rate rose by 0.1 percentage points to 6.2 per cent last month, with no clear trend among the provinces. The unemployment rate rose in six provinces and fell or stayed the same in four.

In Alberta, the number of jobs tumbled by 20,000 in May on a seasonally adjusted basis. The unemployment rate increased to 7.2 per cent.

Last September, Alberta and British Columbia had the same unemployment rate, both at 5.5 per cent. In the five months since, BC’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate has increase by just 0.1 percentage points while Alberta unemployment has soared 1.7 percentage points. Alberta’s unemployment rate gained a full point just since February this year.

New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador, the only provinces with high unemployment than Alberta, have had much smaller increases in unemployment rates since last September, rising only by 0.2 and 0.3 percentage points, respectively.

Significant jobs losses came in Alberta’s construction and retail and wholesale trade sectors, which lost 20,300 and 7,100 jobs, respectively. The two sectors have gained almost no employment in five years although the number of Alberta residents has increased by 11 per cent since the first quarter of 2019, according to Statistics Canada population estimates.

Alberta’s manufacturing sector added jobs, offsetting some losses.