Did the Alberta NDP really increase public sector jobs?

When discussing employment with conservatives, I often hear claims like, “The only jobs the Alberta NDP created were government jobs.” I was curious about how true this was, so I decided to see whether the data supports this position.

According to the 2015–2016 provincial budget, there were the equivalent of 26,289 full-time people working within the various government ministries prior to the Alberta NDP taking office.

The 2019–2020 budget, on the other hand, shows that there were 26,734 full-time equivalent workers in government ministries by the time the NDP were voted out.

That means the NDP increased the number of equivalent full-time government jobs by 445 while they were in power, or about 111 jobs per year.

Here’s how the total numbers look for each year.

Here’s a look at the increases and decreases over the NDP term.

Even though the loss of jobs in the final year was enough to wipe out the gains in the first year, the gains in the other two years still meant a net gain in total ministry jobs.

That’s not all.

The NDP had actually planned to increase jobs by far more in their second year than they did. They had hoped to go from 26,523 in 2015–2016 to 29,618 the next year, a jump of 11.67%. That would’ve been the highest increase of their term.

But instead, their second year came in at 2,824 fewer full-time equivalent jobs they had planned.

Here are how the jobs looked when broken down by ministry.

	2014-15	2018-19
Aboriginal Relations	229	230
Advanced Education	571	575
Agriculture & Food	1,690	0
Agriculture & Forestry	0	1,701
Children’s Services	0	2,768
Community & Social Services	0	3,163
Culture, Multiculturalism & Status of Women	0	568
Culture & Tourism	613	0
Economic Development & Trade	335	0
Economic Development, Trade & Tourism	0	373
Education	648	553
Energy	696	562
Environment & Parks	2,134	2,213
Health	978	910
Human Services	6,187	0
Infrastructure	958	938
Jobs, Skills, Training & Labour	609	0
Justice & Solicitor General	6,865	6,987
Labour & Immigration	0	816
Municipal Affairs	566	590
Seniors	265	269
Service Alberta	1,377	2,238
Status of Women	3	0
Transportation	788	732
Treasury Board & Finance	777	548
	26,289	26,734

Okay, so this can be a bit confusing. The data comes from the 2015–2016 and the 2019–2020 budget documents. The PCs, NDP, and UCP didn’t use the same names for the same ministries, and they moved portfolios around between ministries.

For example, what was Indigenous Relations under the NDP and UCP was Aboriginal Relations under the PCs. Also, you’ll notice that tourism moved from Culture and Tourism to Economic Development, Trade & Tourism. Also, the Seniors ministry became the Seniors and Housing ministry.

Either way, we can see that the number of people working within government ministries also increased.

But wait, there’s more.

The provincial government also hires workers to fill positions in schools, universities, colleges, and health, also referred to as SUCH, as well as public agencies and other arm’s length entities.

Here are all the government workers in the SUCH sector for the year before the NDP took office and their final year in office.

	2014–15	2018–19
Agriculture Financial Services	647	630
Alberta Energy Regulator	1,232	1,240
Alberta Enterprise	6	6
Alberta Health Services	76,101	80,570
Alberta Innovates	652	712
Alberta Insurance Council	25	24
Alberta Investment Management	372	427
Alberta Local Authorities Pension Plan	6	8
Alberta Pensions Services	282	297
Alberta Securities Commission	191	204
Alberta Utilities Commission	150	143
Certificated Edcuation Staff	34,375	37,197
Energy Efficiency Alberta	0	34
Health Quality Council of Alberta	31	35
Legislative Assembly	714	746
Natural Resources Conservation Board	47	47
Non-certificated Edcuation Staff	24,218	26,452
Post-secondary institutions	33,517	33,588
Safety Codes Council	0	60
Transportation Safety Board	13	12
Travel Alberta	84	80
Victims of Crime Fund	37	54
	172,700	182,566

The SUCH sector grew from 172,700 when the NDP took power to 182,566 over the next 4 years, an increase of nearly 10,000.

And that seems like a lot, but keep in mind that bulk of those are in 3 areas. Here are the jobs listed by total increases.

	4-year change
Alberta Health Services	4,469
Certificated Edcuation Staff	2,822
Non-certificated Edcuation Staff	2,234
Post-secondary institutions	71
Alberta Innovates	60
Safety Codes Council	60
Alberta Investment Management	55
Energy Efficiency Alberta	34
Legislative Assembly	32
Victims of Crime Fund	17
Alberta Pensions Services	15
Alberta Securities Commission	13
Alberta Energy Regulator	8
Health Quality Council of Alberta	4
Alberta Local Authorities Pension Plan	2
Alberta Enterprise	0
Natural Resources Conservation Board	0
Alberta Insurance Council	-1
Transportation Safety Board	-1
Travel Alberta	-4
Alberta Utilities Commission	-7
Agriculture Financial Services	-17

During the NDP administration, the equivalent of over 9,500 full-time jobs were created in healthcare and K–12 education. That’s 96.5% of the jobs hired in the SUCH sector.

The other 19 entities accounted for only 341 new jobs, the other 3.5%.

And those numbers for AHS and schools aren’t all admin either. In fact, AHS management dropped from 3,382.74 FTEs in 2014–2015 to 3,113.27 in 2018–2019, a decrease of roughly 270.

Medical staff, on the other hand, increased by 5,332.5 during those 4 years, according to AHS annual report data. There were 1,013 more registered nurses, registered psychiatric nurses, and grad nurses; 1,021 more LPNs; 1,418 more other health technical and professionals; and 1,904 more unregulated health service providers.

So, while it’s true that public sector jobs increased by 10,321 while the NDP were in power, over 90% of them were medical personnel and K–12 staff.