In Alberta, the unemployment rate has jumped by 1.5 per cent between February and March and now sits at 8.7 per cent.
On Thursday, Statistics Canada released unemployment numbers for the country which saw Alberta end March with the fourth-highest unemployment numbers in the country, behind the provinces in Atlantic Canada.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said those numbers don’t reflect all of the jobs that were lost in April, when COVID-19 restriction tightened in the province, and to expect the unemployment number to climb as high as 25 per cent.
"The shutdown of much of our economy is having a devastating impact. Based on some polling we’ve done and some analysis, I fully expect unemployment in Alberta to be at least 25 per cent, at least 500,000 Albertans, and it could be significantly higher than that at this stage alone,” Kenney said.
“The end of the pandemic will not be the end of the economic downturn, the likes of which we have not seen since the 1930s,” Kenney said.
The Conference Board of Canada said they estimate 26,000 energy related jobs will be lost in Marcy and April due to COVID-19 and the crash of energy prices.
“I cannot overstate how grave the implications of this will be for jobs, the economy and the financial security of Albertans.”
Kenney said this will be the most economically challenging time in the province since the great depression, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the plummeting energy prices and the recession in the global economy.
In Edmonton, 21,000 residents lost their jobs in March, launching the unemployment rate to 7.9 per cent, giving the city the fourth-highest unemployment rate in major Canadian cities, only behind Windsor, Calgary and St. John’s.
Calgary’s unemployment rate clocked in at 8.6 per cent and some 17,000 Calgarians lost their jobs in March.
It is estimated Banff is sitting near an 85-per-cent unemployment rate.
Across Canada, 1 million people became unemployed in March.
The food services sector saw a massive decline in employment, particularly in Alberta, where the unemployment rate hit 27.9 per cent in the province.
The country saw the largest unemployment in youth, from 15 to 24 years old, with an employment rate sitting at 16.8 per cent. Approximately 20 per cent of employed youth lost all or the majority of their usual hours. An additional 88,400 youth wanted to work in March but didn’t look due to COVID-19.
Women lost their jobs at twice the rate of men in March. Among people aged 25 to 54, the monthly decline in employment for women was more than twice that of men and nearly half of the decrease among women was from part-time employment.
There were 162,000 (55.8 per cent) more women aged 25 to 54 unemployed in March than in February, raising their unemployment rate up 2.8 percentage points to 7.4 per cent. For men in this age group, unemployment increased by 71,300 (21.8 per cent) bringing the rate up 1.1 percentage points to 5.9 per cent.
In general, workers in less secure, lower-quality jobs, were more likely to see employment losses in March. The number of employees in temporary jobs decreased by 14.5 per cent (274,900 people) compared with a decline of 5.3 per cent (749,500) among employees with permanent jobs. Job losses were found across all types of temporary work, led by those in casual employment (down 23.5 per cent or 136,000 people). There were 5 per cent fewer temporary workers with a term or contract position.
Temporary employees were more likely to lose all or the majority of their usual work hours (21.7 per cent) compared with permanent employees (11.6 per cent) in March.
The number of workers holding more than one job at the same time decreased by 25.6 per cent (283,200) in March. Youth (down 33.6 per cent or 44,900 people) and core-aged women (down 30.5 per cent or 127,200 people) saw the most notable declines in holding multiple jobs.
The share of workers holding more than one job declined from 5.8 per cent to 4.5 per cent, a rate last seen consistently in the late 1980s.
