Alberta Leads the Country in Terms of Job Creation and Employment despite Losing Jobs in April

Last month, Alberta lost a total of 2,900 jobs compared to the numbers reported in March. Despite these figures, employment was still up on a year-over-year basis. In terms of job creation and employment, Alberta remains well above the other provinces.

According to Statistics Canada's latest job report, there was a loss of23,000 full-time jobs but 20,000 part-time jobs were gained. While these numbers certainly don't look great, they aren't that bad when you look at the overall larger picture.

During the last year full-time job positions have been created almost constantly while the number of part-time positions has also gone up. When you look at the employment statistics on a year-over-year basis, employment in the province has increased 3.3%. There is no other province that comes close to meeting that increase. Nationally, there was a 0.2% decrease in the number of jobs in April as compared to March. Canada saw a drop of 28,900 jobs across the country.

The unemployment rate in Calgary went up to 5.3% in April. In March the rate was 5%. The Alberta unemployment rate went down to 4.7% from 4.9% in March. Nationally, the unemployment rate in Canada stayed the same at 6.9%. Saskatchewan has the lowest unemployment rate at 3.4% while Alberta comes in second at 4.7%.

Employment in Calgary was up 3.3% with 25,400 additional jobs when compared to April of last year. It was also up by 3.3% in Alberta with 72,300 additional jobs. In Canada, there was a rise of 0.8% on a year-over-year basis with an additional 149,200 job positions.