At the end of February, Statistics Canada released employment data for December 2021. This data included information on the number of salaried employees and the number of hourly employees in each province.
I thought I’d go through the Alberta data and compare it to the same data over the last 10 years, since December 2011.
Keep in mind that this data hasn’t been adjusted for seasonality, so you’ll see dips after the Christmas season.
First, here’s a high level look at total jobs over the past decade.
What we see is that even though there has been relative consistent growth in employment data over the last year and a half, December 2021 still came in lower than employment numbers before the pandemic.
In December 2021, there were 1.960 million people employed in Alberta as salaried or hourly employees. Two years earlier (months before the pandemic), that number was 2.019 million.
Not only that, but this is the third lowest December Alberta has seen in the last 10 years.
| December 2011 | 1,869,562 |
| December 2012 | 1,945,623 |
| December 2013 | 2,020,758 |
| December 2014 | 2,087,411 |
| December 2015 | 2,022,293 |
| December 2016 | 1,965,104 |
| December 2017 | 1,995,491 |
| December 2018 | 2,007,565 |
| December 2019 | 2,019,051 |
| December 2020 | 1,838,450 |
| December 2021 | 1,960,853 |
Plus, Alberta was 1 of only 3 provinces that saw a decrease in the number of its salaried and hourly employees between December 2019 and December 2021. And its decrease was the worst performance of all the provinces.
| Dec 2019 | Dec 2021 | Change | % change | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NB | 316,542 | 331,176 | 14,634 | 4.62% |
| PEI | 66,994 | 69,798 | 2,804 | 4.19% |
| QC | 3,793,493 | 3,858,813 | 65,320 | 1.72% |
| BC | 2,332,964 | 2,366,520 | 33,556 | 1.44% |
| SK | 483,404 | 489,274 | 5,870 | 1.21% |
| NS | 420,334 | 423,942 | 3,608 | 0.86% |
| MB | 607,986 | 611,204 | 3,218 | 0.53% |
| ON | 6,631,760 | 6,600,413 | -31,347 | -0.47% |
| NL | 208,280 | 207,161 | -1,119 | -0.54% |
| AB | 2,019,051 | 1,960,853 | -58,198 | -2.88% |
So, while it might be easy for us to dismiss the poor performance as being because of the pandemic, it’s important to note that 7 of the 10 provinces were able to see net increases of thousands of jobs—some of them tens of thousands.
Alberta’s loss of nearly 60,000 workers was almost twice as many as Ontario’s, even though Ontario has over 3 times the population.
If Alberta’s abhorrent performance was because of the pandemic, why didn’t the other provinces have similar losses, given that every province had to deal with an economic shutdown?
Now, let’s split the data by hourly employees and salaried employees.
Alberta has seen a significant increase in the number of hourly employees since the start of the pandemic, jumping up 265,404 people, from 842,150 in May 2020 to 1,107,554 in December 2021.
However, if with an increase of half a million workers, December 2021’s numbers are still—like those of the total numbers—below December 2019 levels.
In December 2019, there were 1,130,453 hourly employees. Two years later—and after a year and a half of economic recovery—that number is at 1,107,554. That’s nearly 23,000 employees short.
On the plus side, that number is one of the highest for a December over the last 10 years.
| December 2011 | 1,024,850 |
| December 2012 | 1,056,842 |
| December 2013 | 1,099,953 |
| December 2014 | 1,161,662 |
| December 2015 | 1,102,962 |
| December 2016 | 1,070,761 |
| December 2017 | 1,090,389 |
| December 2018 | 1,125,338 |
| December 2019 | 1,130,453 |
| December 2020 | 1,031,844 |
| December 2021 | 1,107,554 |
Alberta was 1 of only 3 provinces that saw a decrease in the number of hourly employees between 2019 and 2021.
| Dec 2019 | Dec 2021 | Change | % change | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AB | 1,130,453 | 1,107,554 | -22,899 | -2.03% |
| ON | 3,662,230 | 3,631,228 | -31,002 | -0.85% |
| BC | 1,397,918 | 1,386,543 | -11,375 | -0.81% |
| PEI | 39,259 | 39,400 | 141 | 0.36% |
| SK | 273,855 | 277,857 | 4,002 | 1.46% |
| NS | 247,935 | 251,880 | 3,945 | 1.59% |
| NL | 122,674 | 124,653 | 1,979 | 1.61% |
| QC | 2,331,909 | 2,370,620 | 38,711 | 1.66% |
| MB | 347,077 | 358,549 | 11,472 | 3.31% |
| NB | 192,619 | 201,716 | 9,097 | 4.72% |
And as you can see, they had the worst performance of all the provinces.
There was no indication in the dataset regarding how many of the hourly employees were part-time and how many were full-time.
It’s a similar story for salaried employees: despite a year and a half of growth, the number of salaried employees at the end of 2021 was still below what it was prior to the start of the pandemic.
At the end of 2021, there were 724,377 salaried employees in Alberta. Two years prior, that number was 744,502, a loss of 20,125.
And unlike we saw with hourly employees, this past December was one of the worst Decembers for Alberta’s salaried employees.
| Dec 2011 | 672,386 |
| Dec 2012 | 729,558 |
| Dec 2013 | 770,880 |
| Dec 2014 | 778,362 |
| Dec 2015 | 773,965 |
| Dec 2016 | 739,789 |
| Dec 2017 | 742,020 |
| Dec 2018 | 736,637 |
| Dec 2019 | 744,502 |
| Dec 2020 | 682,082 |
| Dec 2021 | 724,377 |
When compared to the rest of the provinces, Alberta lost the highest number of salaried jobs over the last two years and lost the second highest percentage of salaried jobs.
| Dec 2019 | Dec 2021 | Change | % change | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL | 75,296 | 71,691 | -3,605 | -4.79% |
| AB | 744,502 | 724,377 | -20,125 | -2.70% |
| MB | 222,118 | 216,549 | -5,569 | -2.51% |
| ON | 2,588,946 | 2,571,036 | -17,910 | -0.69% |
| NS | 149,181 | 148,391 | -790 | -0.53% |
| SK | 179,409 | 182,902 | 3,493 | 1.95% |
| QC | 1,243,821 | 1,271,637 | 27,816 | 2.24% |
| NB | 106,101 | 111,886 | 5,785 | 5.45% |
| BC | 792,170 | 848,690 | 56,520 | 7.13% |
| PEI | 23,460 | 26,291 | 2,831 | 12.07% |
In fact, Alberta’s loss accounted for 41.9% of all the salaried job losses in the country during the last two years.
So much for those “good-paying jobs” Jason Kenney, Alberta’s premier, keeps talking about.
