For the second time in three months, employment declined in Alberta, down 18,900 jobs in January, says Statistics Canada in a report released Friday.
“This decrease was concentrated in part-time work,” said the federal agency.
The province’s unemployment rate rose from 7.0 per cent to 7.3 per cent.
On an annual basis, Alberta has lost 9,300 jobs.
In the Calgary census metropolitan area, there were 8,100 jobs shed in January as the unemployment rate rose to 7.2 per cent from 7.1 per cent the previous month. However, year-over-year, employment in the Calgary CMA is up by 10,800 positions.
In the Edmonton census metropolitan area, there were 1,800 jobs shed in January as the unemployment rate rose to 8.2 per cent from 8.1 per cent the previous month. Year-over-year, the Edmonton CMA has lost 10,500 jobs.
According to ATB Financial’s Economics & Research Team, full-time employment in Alberta was down by 0.2 per cent (3,600) in January compared to a drop of 3.5 per cent (15,200) in part-time jobs and the number of unemployed Albertans increased by 3.1 per cent to 181,700.
“While still down by 10,000 positions (-6.7 per cent) compared to a year ago, the number of oil and gas jobs increased by 4,200 (3.1 per cent) compared to December,” said the financial institution in its daily economic update The Owl.
“The construction sector continued to shed workers with the number of jobs down by 6,200 (-2.6 per cent) compared to December. Other sectors hit hard include business and building support services (-4.0 per cent), transportation and warehousing (-2.9 per cent) and wholesale and retail trade (-2.7 per cent).
“Sectors that saw jobs added include accommodation and food services (+1.4 per cent), manufacturing (+1.7 per cent) and agriculture (+2.0 per cent).”
The federal agency said employment across Canada increased by 35,000 in January, all in full-time work. The unemployment rate fell 0.1 percentage points to 5.5 per cent.
The additional employment in January contributed to gains totalling 268,000 since January 2019. All of this increase was the result of growth in full-time employment, added StatsCan.
“In January, severe weather conditions affected several regions of the country, including British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Alberta. During the survey’s reference week for January 2020 (January 12 to 18), 390,000 employees in Canada lost work hours due to the weather, with the majority (61.1 per cent) in British Columbia. While employment in Newfoundland and Labrador was little changed, a large number of employees (50,000 or 25.5 per cent of all employees in the province) lost work hours because of a severe winter storm. In Alberta, 31,000 employees lost work hours due to severe weather conditions,” said the report.
“The blistering pace of hiring seen in Canada between late-2018 and mid-2019 has faded, but today’s data suggest the labour market is far from grinding to a halt,” said Josh Nye, Senior Economist with RBC Economics, in a commentary note.
“Job gains over the last six months averaged a healthy 20,000 and nearly all of that was full-time work. GDP growth toward the end of last year was downright ugly, though transitory factors were at play and the employment figures suggest underlying trends are better than the headline numbers indicate. A low unemployment rate—now just 0.1 percentage point above its cycle low—also goes against the (Bank of Canada’s) view that the economy is no longer close to full capacity, though a drop in the participation rate might be evidence of some spare workers.”
Douglas Porter, Chief Economist with BMO Economics, said nine of the 10 provinces reported job gains last month.
“Unfortunately, the outlier was the beleaguered Alberta economy,” he said.
But on a national level, “underlying job growth appears to remain on track, after the brief scare late last year, and conditions remain tight. While the Bank of Canada is clearly on high alert over the potential economic implications of the new coronavirus, recent indicators suggest the economy had decent underlying momentum at the start of the year after a soft Q4,” added Porter.
Brian DePratto, Senior Economist with TD Economics, said it was another decent month of job gains, coming from full-time creation and with solid wage gains.
“The Canadian economy has had no shortage of headwinds and shocks of late, but monthly noise aside, the labour market continues to shrug them off, suggesting the economy remains resilient,” he said.
“Looking ahead, we expect some near-term challenges – the novel Coronavirus is likely to continue to hit activity in the travel/accommodation sectors for instance. But, absent a deeper or more lasting shock, we see few catalysts to break the recent trend-like performance of labour markets. The bigger question from a GDP perspective is whether/when all these new workers will start pushing hours worked higher.”
Mario Toneguzzi is a business reporter in Calgary.
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