The Calgary census metropolitan area saw employment decline by 8,000 positions in February and by 1,000 year-over-year as the unemployment rate rose from 7.2 per cent to 7.4 per cent, according to a report released Friday by Statistics Canada.

Meanwhile, in the Edmonton census metropolitan area 500 jobs were created in February but the capital city was down 7,500 jobs from a year ago. Its unemployment rate also dipped from 8.2 per cent to 7.8 per cent.

However, Alberta gained 11,400 jobs in February. The federal agency said most of those jobs were among youth.

The province’s unemployment rate also dipped from 7.3 per cent in January to 7.2 per cent in February.

On a year-over-year basis, employment in the province was down by 1,600 positions.

ATB Financial’s Economics & Research Team said the province’s job gains came after employment had fallen three months in a row, but most of the job gains were in part-time employment with full-time positions contracting by 0.5 per cent compared to a year ago.

In its daily economic update The Owl, ATB said Alberta’s unemployment rate is the fourth highest among the provinces after Newfoundland and Labrador (12.0 per cent), Prince Edward Island (8.0 per cent) and Nova Scotia (7.8 per cent).

In Canada, employment rose by 30,300 and the unemployment rate increased by 0.1 percentage points to 5.6 per cent.

Compared with 12 months earlier, employment rose by 245,300, the result of gains in full-time work (+252,000), said StatsCan.

“Canada ended the last of the pre-virus jobs reports with a flourish, as a strong month for employment and a healthy wage gain showed that everything was fine in the labour market… then. The 30K jobs gain in February continued a puzzling gap between hiring, which has looked brisk, and GDP which was already sluggish in the second half of last year and seemed likely to remain so in Q1. The jobs were in private sector paid positions, and full time, led by wholesale, retail and even factory positions. Wages for permanent workers are up 4.3%, although that series is so imperfect that the Bank of Canada gives it very little weight in assessing wage inflation,” said Avery Shenfeld, an economist with CIBC Economics.

“The tendency would be to quickly brush this report off as yesterday’s story—“oh, so last month”. But the broad gains and solid wage increases do indicate that the economy was still grinding forward in the weeks before the COVID-19 storm. And, frankly, that’s good news,” said Douglas Porter, Chief Economist with BMO Economics.

“If it weren’t for COVID-19, this release would have us in an upbeat mood. The job creation trend held, the mix was pretty decent, and those pesky hours finally turned in a decent performance. Even the uptick in the unemployment rate was for the ‘right’ reason of more Canadians looking for work or otherwise engaging with labour markets,” said Brian DePratto, Senior Economist with TD Economics.

“Unfortunately, given the timing of the survey, there is little to be gleaned about how employers are reacting to the COVID-19 outbreak. That said, today’s data suggests that, as Bank of Canada Governor Poloz noted in his speech yesterday, Canadian labour markets remained a key source of economic resilience ahead of the viral outbreak.

“At this point, the rear-view mirror of this and other early-2020 data is even less helpful than normal in assessing the Bank of Canada’s path forward. As Wednesday’s interest rate decision and follow-up speech showed, the Bank of Canada is more concerned about what’s to come as COVID-19 effects ripple through the economy. The first volley in the battle against confidence and other negative impacts has been fired, and it seems safe to assume there is more to come.”