Edmonton’s employment picture continues to improve, even to the surprise of City of Edmonton chief economist John Rose who had anticipated a weaker performance in December.
“[The jobless rate] has come down quite nicely,” Rose said Friday. “We’re tied with Calgary at 7.5 per cent, and that’s a very, very good sign.”
In November, unemployment in Edmonton and Calgary was at 7.8 per cent.
December jobless numbers from Statistics Canada show Alberta and Quebec led the country in job creation, each adding more than 26,000 jobs.
Canada added 79,000 jobs last month, exceeding expectations and pushing the jobless rate down two-tenths of a percentage point to 5.7 per cent. It’s the lowest level since 1976.
Rose said he expected Edmonton’s unemployment rate would be stuck at around eight per cent due to the increasing size of the labour force, but that didn’t happen.
Since the start of 2017, Edmonton has seen consistent gains in full-time employment, particularly in the areas of healthcare, education and some service sectors.
Those jobs tend to be public sector jobs that make up about 27 per cent of all jobs in Edmonton, Rose said.
“This is why Edmonton has done reasonably well compared to most other parts of the province,” he said, noting that public-sector employment continued to expand through 2017.
There were also employment gains in the financial, insurance and real estate sectors, he said.
Growth in manufacturing jobs remains slow
However, job growth continues to be slow in the manufacturing sector, Rose said.
“We have seen some employment pick up in that particular sector but we’re still well behind the peak levels of employment in manufacturing that we saw back in 2014.”
Rose believes the sluggish improvement in manufacturing employment is a direct result of the slowdown in the energy sector that began with the oil-price collapse of 2014.
On Thursday, Finance Minister Joe Ceci said the government remains focused on diversifying the economy even though Alberta is continuing to show employment gains.
“Keeping our shoulder to the wheel on diversification is as important as cheering for higher oil prices,” Ceci said.