Calgary’s unemployment rate continues to trend higher than the national average, but not for the reason you might expect.
It isn’t because local companies are laying workers off en masse — it’s because people are moving to Alberta faster than they can find jobs.
“We’re going through a period of adjustment — it’ll take some time for the labour market to absorb all the people,” said Mark Parsons, chief economist at ATB Financial, an Alberta government-owned bank.
While job growth in the province has been strong, he said, it hasn’t been sufficient to keep up with the uptick in people moving here.
Calgary’s unemployment rate hit 7.9 per cent in November, according to Statistics Canada’s latest three-month moving average. That’s above the current national rate of 6.8 per cent.
The federal agency’s data shows that for about the past decade, Calgary’s unemployment rate has often hovered above the rest of Canada’s. The trend began following the collapse in oil prices in 2014 and remained higher than the national average throughout much of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The two unemployment rates kissed in 2022, meeting at around five per cent. Since then, Calgary’s unemployment rate has diverged thanks to significant gains in interprovincial migrants, said Parsons. And, like the rest of Canada, the city has also seen strong growth from international migration, particularly among temporary residents, he said.
Heading west for opportunity
Cristina Schultz, recruitment manager at About Staffing, said she started getting calls in 2022 from people in Ontario and B.C. interested in moving to Alberta. (At the time, the provincial government was encouraging the trend through its “Alberta is Calling” campaign, which it’s since wrapped up.)
More recently, she said, many job-seekers have realized that bosses tend to prefer hiring people who are already local. Some have decided to roll the dice and move to Alberta before having a job in hand.
“They’ve just kind of picked up and made the move to open up their opportunities.”
Calgary’s not entirely alone in this situation. According to Statistics Canada, Edmonton’s unemployment rate was even higher in November, at 8.3 per cent.
“It’s not surprising that we’re seeing Alberta’s major cities to have unemployment rates in the upper half or close to the highest in Canada,” said Charles St-Arnaud, chief economist with Alberta Central, the central banking facility for the province’s credit unions. “They’ve been attracting a lot of the population growth over the last year.”
Alberta’s population grew by around 204,000 people between July of 2023 and July of 2024, according to a recent provincial news release. That’s an annual growth rate of around 4.4 per cent — the highest rate since 1981 and the highest among all provinces, it said. (It’s also the size of two new cities roughly the size of Red Deer.)
An estimated 42 per cent of that increase in working-age population was concentrated in Calgary, and 40.5 per cent in Edmonton, said St-Arnaud.
While it’s good news that the trend isn’t driven by layoffs, he said, some downsides remain. For people who have just moved to the province, or are newly graduating, it might take them longer than usual to find a job.
And for those new grads, there’s evidence to suggest their long-term earning potential could take a hit from entering the job market during a period of higher unemployment.
CBC’s Andrew Brown and Robson Fletcher discuss the “Alberta is Calling” campaign the provincial government launched last year and the difference in housing prices between the two years.
Some industries face shortages
There are industries still dealing with labour shortages, even with the current job market. Home-builders need more skilled trades workers, and many hospitality businesses still can’t seem to find enough staff, said Parsons, from ATB.
It’s expected the unemployment rate will start to moderate as population growth slows, though Parsons expects this will continue to be higher in Alberta compared to the rest of Canada.
People are probably going to keep moving to Alberta from other parts of the country in search of a relatively affordable place to live, he said.
“It is going to take some time for the labour market to adjust to this rapid influx,” said Parsons.
“We do see the unemployment rate staying elevated going into 2025 and then coming down further in 2026.”
