At the end of last month, the Alberta government released their 2026–2027 budget.
Lots of other people are analyzing spending in various areas, but there’s one area that most people seem to be overlooking. And it’s in my wheelhouse.
Let’s look at how many people will be working in the public sector during the next budget year. Specifically, I want to examine post-secondary workers, K–12 workers, and health care workers.
Here are the number of full-time equivalent positions from last year and the projected numbers for this year.
| 2025–2026 | 2026–2027 | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Post-secondary institutions | 33,741 | 34,151 | 410 |
| K–12 certified | 39,434 | 41,034 | 1,600 |
| K–12 non-certified | 27,926 | 28,726 | 800 |
| Acute Care Alberta* | 51,473 | 53,321 | 1,848 |
| Assisted Living Alberta* | 10,930 | 10,930 | 0 |
| Primary Care Alberta* | 9,607 | 9,607 | 0 |
| Recovery Alberta* | 8,190 | 9,284 | 1,094 |
Interesting that the provincial government has no plans to increase the number of assisted living workers they employ nor the number of primary care workers they employ.
These would include medical clinics, long-term care homes, and so on.
Here’s the increase in this year’s budget as a percentage of last year’s budget.
| Post-secondary institutions | 1.22% |
| K–12 certified | 4.06% |
| K–12 non-certified | 2.86% |
| Acute Care Alberta | 3.59% |
| Assisted Living Alberta | 0.00% |
| Primary Care Alberta | 0.00% |
| Recovery Alberta | 13.36% |
Most areas—other than assisted living and primary care, of courese,—will see an increase of between 1.2% and 4.1% more workers over the next year.
Interestingly, Recovery Alberta will see an increase of more than 13% over the next year. We have no money to hire more workers in long-term care homes and local family doctor’s offices, but we seem to have money for recovery workers.
Which is not to say that I think we should not have recovery workers. I think we should be increasing workers across the board.
I wonder if the fact that most workers in assisted living and primary care are unionized and those in the recovery sector are less likely to be unionized has anything to do with it.
Speaking of unions, some of the unions representing workers in these sectors are not happy.
Sandra Azocar, the president of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees is worried about assisted living and postsecondary investments by this government. AUPE represents workers in these sectors.
“Alberta is desperately short of continuing-care spaces, but this budget simply does not invest enough in Alberta’s aging population. AUPE members see it every day. Acute-care patients are already shipped to facilities where they’re not getting the level of care they need. It’s only going to get worse now.”
“[Postsecondary] students and staff will pay the price for the government’s decisions.”
The United Nurses of Alberta, naturally, is also concerned.
“While Alberta’s population has boomed over the past three decades, the number of hospital beds has decreased from 13,000 in the early 1990s to around 8,000 today.”
“With few exceptions, past governments have closed hospitals and closed beds instead of increasing the capacity to keep up with Alberta’s population. The last new hospital built in Alberta was opened 14 years ago and the last new hospital built in Edmonton was opened almost 40 years ago!”
“The government should build up the public system we all rely on by investing in health care workers, improving urban hospitals and rural health centres, and keeping our health care public, safe and accessible, no matter your postal code.”
The president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Raj Uppal, agrees.
“For the last six years, the UCP slashed corporate taxes, underfunded education, underfunded health care, cut post secondary funding, and cut municipal funding. In today’s budget, we have a huge deficit, tax increases, and they’ve still not reversed their own cuts to education and health care.”
“There’s a crisis in health care, but no new funding for hospitals or primary care. Classrooms are overcrowded, but no funding for a single new public school.”
Since Uppal brought it up, let us look at how staffing levels have changed since the UCP took power.
| 2018–19 | 2026–27 | Change | % change | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Post-secondary | 33,588 | 34,151 | 563 | 1.68% |
| K–12 certified | 37,197 | 41,034 | 3,837 | 11.42% |
| K–12 non-certified | 26,452 | 28,726 | 2,274 | 6.77% |
| Alberta Health Services | 80,570 | 83,142 | 2,572 | 7.66% |
The 2026–2027 budget does not project full-time equivalent positions for Alberta Health Services, so I added up the numbers for the four replacement organizations.
The province’s population at the end of 2018 was 4,292,556. At the end of last year, by comparison, it had grown to 5,029,346. That is a 17.16% increase.
While the number of people working in these 4 sectors has increased compared to the NDP’s last year in office, they have increased slower than population growth.
Let me show you another way: the number of workers per capita.
| 2018–19 | 2026–27 | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Post-secondary institutions | 127.80 | 147.27 | 19.47 |
| K–12 certified | 115.40 | 122.57 | 7.16 |
| K–12 non-certified | 162.28 | 175.08 | 12.80 |
| Alberta Health Services | 53.28 | 60.49 | 7.21 |
In all 4 cases, the number of workers per capita has increased over the last 8 years.
That means more students per teacher, more patients per nurse, and more residents per long-term care worker.
In their budget document, the provincial government said that they are “investing in programs and services important to Albertans like health care [and] education”. While that technically is true, the investment falls short.
Again.
