Nearly 5,000 people left Alberta during 2021 so far

Last week, Statistics Canada recently released interprovincial migration data for the third quarter of 2021.

Alberta had 22,013 people move in from other provinces between July and September and saw 17,524 move away to other provinces. In other words, Alberta saw a net gain of 4,489 people.

This marks the first time in 6 quarters that Alberta saw more people move to the province than leave it.

	Incoming	Outgoing	Net
Q2 2020	16,872	20,923	-4,051
Q3 2020	12,592	13,454	-862
Q4 2020	8,659	10,449	-1,790
Q1 2021	15,241	18,973	-3,732
Q2 2021	23,639	29,086	-5,447
Q3 2021	22,013	17,524	4,489
Total	77,003	92,885	-15,882

Even with this gain in the third quarter, however, Alberta still has a net loss of 4,690 for 2021 to date. This the 2nd year in a row that Alberta saw a net interprovincial migration loss.

In fact, Alberta has seen a net gain in interprovincial migration in just 1 year since 2015. In 2019, Alberta saw only 949 more people move here than move away, the third smallest increase in nearly 60 years.

Actually, there were 16 years since 1962 where fewer people moved from Alberta than moved to Alberta, so it’s not actually that uncommon, and despite what some people might claim, it may not even be something we can blame on the UCP.

I mean, sure, most of the time over the last 60 years, Alberta has seen net migration gains, but the number of years with losses since 1961 means that, on average, 1 out of every 4 years has seen a net migration loss.

Definitely not that rare.

And the year-to-date net loss of 4,690 people for 2021 so far isn’t the largest decrease Alberta has ever seen. In fact, this year and last year are the 10th and 11th largest decreases (out of 16), respectively.

Actually, during their 4 years in office, the NDP saw only 1 year with a net gain in interprovincial immigration. Throughout the NDP’s entire term, Alberta had a net loss of 33,933 in interprovincial immigration.

If we look at just their first 10 quarters, the NDP had a net migration loss of 26,291, while the UCP had about half that during their first 10 quarters, with a net loss of 8,490 during their term so far.

So, I think we should be careful about blaming this net migration loss on the UCP.