Union coverage on the rise in Alberta

Last month, Statistics Canada released their Labour Market Survey results for November 2023. One of the datasets in that survey is union coverage among the labour force, which is how many of the workers are unionized.

I thought I’d take a look at how union coverage in Alberta compares to that of the other provinces.

	Labour force	Union coverage	% coverage
NL	219,500	89,900	40.96%
QC	4,023,000	1,591,900	39.57%
PEI	79,400	27,600	34.76%
MB	623,500	214,600	34.42%
SK	525,200	179,000	34.08%
BC	2,374,800	732,000	30.82%
NS	446,800	132,000	29.54%
NB	353,300	103,700	29.35%
ON	6,849,600	1,821,600	26.59%
AB	2,137,200	551,700	25.81%

Here, we see that Alberta has the lowest union coverage among all the provinces, at just under 26%. The highest union coverage was found in Newfoundland and Labrador, which was a full 15 percentage points above Alberta.

No province had a majority of workers with union coverage.

I was curious if this has changed at all under the UCP, so here’s a look at union coverage in November 2018, the last November under the NDP.

	Labour force	Union coverage	% coverage
QC	3,715,100	1,426,400	38.39%
NL	211,800	75,400	35.60%
MB	564,300	198,300	35.14%
PEI	66,000	21,500	32.58%
SK	476,500	153,500	32.21%
NS	400,200	121,900	30.46%
BC	2,186,900	626,500	28.65%
NB	319,800	90,200	28.21%
ON	6,178,400	1,606,400	26.00%
AB	1,923,600	453,200	23.56%

Alberta was still the bottom of the pack, but the coverage was even smaller. Under the UCP, union coverage has actually increased, going from 23.56% in 2018 to 25.81% in 2023.

Does that mean things were pretty bad for unions under the NDP? Well, let’s look at coverage in November 2014, the last November before the NDP took power.

	Labour force	Union coverage	% coverage
QC	3,486,500	1,368,900	39.26%
NL	217,800	83,400	38.29%
MB	552,400	194,800	35.26%
SK	461,000	150,100	32.56%
PEI	60,900	19,300	31.69%
BC	1,975,100	600,800	30.42%
NS	390,500	116,200	29.76%
NB	311,500	90,200	28.96%
ON	5,803,500	1,545,900	26.64%
AB	1,903,000	432,500	22.73%

Once again, the bottom of the pack, but we see that even though union coverage was lower under the NDP than it is now under the UCP, it still increased under the NDP.

Here’s a look at Alberta’s union coverage going back to 1997.

It looks like it reached a high of 27.17% in November 1998 then plummeted for the next 17 years or so (other than a brief reprieve in 2009 and 2010), when it bottomed out at 22.69% in 2013 and barely increasing the following year.

It’s been recovering over the last decade.

Here’s a look at union coverage, separated by public and private sector.

A lot of the decline in union coverage between 1997 and 2013–2014 was driven by the private sector. Both sectors were pretty stable for a 5-year period between 2013 and 2018.

However, shortly after the UCP won the 2019 provincial election, private sector union coverage skyrocketed before plummeting during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since the summer of 2022, union coverage in both the public sector and the private sector has been on the rise.

The private sector, for example has gone from 9.61% union coverage in May 2022 to 12.21% in November 2023.

During the same period, the public sector increased from 67.79% to 74.84%.