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AB lost 21K payroll employees since Job Creation Tax Cut

Since the second quarter of 2019, Alberta has been the only province in Canada to decrease its number payroll employees.

Statistics Canada recently released second quarter data on payroll employment for each of the provinces. The seasonally adjusted data was as of June 2022.

I figured I’d take a look to see how the job situation looks in Alberta.

This data is different from the labour force data I reported on for June, in that this specifically reports on workers who are on payroll.

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ON6,418,245
QC3,773,865
BC2,319,770
AB1,944,135
MB593,145
SK469,675
NS412,410
NB315,795
NL198,780
PEI66,995

Unsurprisingly, Alberta had the fourth largest number of payroll employees in Canada. After all, they do have the fourth largest population in general.

In Q2 2022, there were 1,944,135 payroll employees working in Alberta. The previous quarter, that number was 1,912,625. That’s a 31,510 increase, the fourth largest increase in the country.

Q1 2022Q2 2022Change% change
ON6,299,8806,418,245118,3651.88%
QC3,724,5503,773,86549,3151.32%
BC2,283,5652,319,77036,2051.59%
AB1,912,6251,944,13531,5101.65%
NS400,230412,41012,1803.04%
NL196,000198,7802,7801.42%
NB313,100315,7952,6950.86%
MB591,180593,1451,9650.33%
SK467,775469,6751,9000.41%
PEI65,98066,9951,0151.54%

When we look at the increase as a percentage of the first quarter’s job numbers, we see that Alberta actually had the third largest increase, surpassed by only Nova Scotia and Ontario.

Alberta also had the fourth largest increase when we compare to Q2 2021, a year earlier and a year after the province first introduced public health protections related to the pandemic.

Q2 2021Q2 2022Change% change
ON5,909,5556,418,245508,6908.61%
QC3,513,3053,773,865260,5607.42%
BC2,151,6352,319,770168,1357.81%
AB1,814,6401,944,135129,4957.14%
MB569,280593,14523,8654.19%
NS390,865412,41021,5455.51%
SK450,550469,67519,1254.24%
NB303,650315,79512,1454.00%
NL190,445198,7808,3354.38%
PEI63,21066,9953,7855.99%

As I said at the outset, this shouldn’t be that surprising, given that we have the fourth largest population in general. Alberta is also in fourth place in terms of percentage change over the last year.

However, things start to look less rosy the further we go back.

Statistics Canada didn’t have stats for the second quarter of 2020, but here are what the numbers look like when compared to the second quarter of 2019, right before the UCP government introduced what they dubbed the “Job Creation Tax Cut”.

Q2 2019Q2 2022Change% change
QC3,603,3153,773,865170,5504.73%
ON6,283,8356,418,245134,4102.14%
BC2,231,5152,319,77088,2553.95%
NS397,585412,41014,8253.73%
NB305,345315,79510,4503.42%
SK464,810469,6754,8651.05%
MB589,360593,1453,7850.64%
PEI63,25566,9953,7405.91%
NL198,280198,7805000.25%
AB1,965,2201,944,135-21,085-1.07%

Alberta’s growth in payroll employees since June 2019 was the worst of all the provinces in Canada. In fact, we were the only province in the country to see a loss in payroll employees during that 3-year period, losing over 21,000 workers.

Keep in mind that Alberta’s population increased by 3.6% during the same period. So the picture is even worse. Alberta went from having 45.24% of its population on payroll in Q2 2019 to 43.19% in Q2 2022, a drop of more than 2 full percentage points.

Québec saw an increase in over 170,000 payroll employees during the same period. Ontario also passed the 100,000 mark. And PEI grew their number of payroll employees by nearly 6%.

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By Kim Siever

Kim Siever is an independent queer journalist based in Lethbridge, Alberta. He writes daily news articles, focusing on politics and labour.

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