By Charles Lefebvre

Unemployment rate up in Medicine Hat despite more people working

Sep 6, 2019 | 3:50 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — Medicine Hat’s unemployment rate hit double digits, according to the most recent job report released from Statistics Canada, but the organization says the unemployment rate only tells part of the story.

According to data from Statistics Canada, Medicine Hat’s unemployment rate was listed as 11.3 per cent for August 2019. It’s up fro 10 per cent in July 2019 (Statistics Canada cautions against month-to-month comparisons for Medicine Hat, due to the smaller sample size).

It’s also nearly double from a year ago, where the unemployment rate sat at 6 per cent.

Vincent Ferraro says the unemployment rate only tells part of the story for the region.

“The good news is is that it’s not because of employment losses, employment actually went up a little bit,” he said. “We have 40,900 people working this August, compared to 36,200 people working last August.”

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The unemployment rate rose, he explained, due to more people coming into the labour market looking for work in the past year.

“The labour force went from 38,500 to 46,100, so not everybody who came in found work,” he said. “Some were still looking for work, so that pushed the unemployment rate up.”

The Lethbridge-Medicine Hat region’s unemployment rate was 7.1 per cent, up from 6.4 per cent in July. In August 2018, the unemployment rate was 5.1 per cent.

Ferraro says several industries in the region have seen improvement in employment, noting retail, education, health care and social services saw increased employment in the past year.

He says the biggest drops were in natural resources and construction. This year, Ferraro says approximately 14,800 were working in construction in the Lethbridge-Medicine Hat region, while 18,000 were employed a year ago. Natural resources also saw a slight decline, with 6,400 people working this August. In August 2018, there were approximately 8,300 employed in the industry.

“For Alberta as a whole, oil and gas has been affected,” said Ferraro. “For natural resources in Alberta, we have a decline year over year of about 16,000 people working in that sector.”

Currently in Alberta, 138,000 people are employed in oil and gas.

Across Alberta, the unemployment rate rose slightly to 7.2 per cent, up from 7 per cent in July. The unemployment rate for August 2018 was 6.7 per cent.

Nationally, Canada’s unemployment rate was 5.7 per cent, unchanged from July.