The head office count in Calgary and Alberta has dropped slightly from 2014 when the oil price collapse began in the latter half of the year, a report from Canada’s federal statistics agency shows.
A report released Friday by Statistics Canada indicated that the number of head offices in Calgary fell from 215 in 2014 to 212 in 2018. The number of employees in those head offices dropped from 32,284 in 2014 to 29,251 in 2018.
During that period, Edmonton saw its head office count decrease from 118 to 117 while total employees declined from 6,658 to 5,961.
Across Alberta, the number of offices fell from 395 to 383 while the number of employees dropped from 42,404 to 37,314.
In Canada, the head office count dropped slightly from 2,759 in 2014 to 2,737 in 2018 and the number of employees also dropped from 230,394 to 228,291.
“Head office employment remained concentrated in Ontario (42.6 per cent), Quebec (23.4 per cent) and Alberta (16.3 per cent) in 2018,” said the StatsCan report.
“The majority of head offices were located in major census metropolitan areas (CMAs). Toronto had the most head office employees (76,731) of any CMA, in part because of the financial sector. Montréal was next (42,462), followed by Calgary (29,251) and Vancouver (16,261). Similarly, Toronto also had the most head offices (698), followed by Montréal (385), Vancouver (242) and Calgary (212).”
Mario Toneguzzi is a business reporter in Calgary.
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