(The Canadian Press)

By Alex McCuaig

Employment Numbers

Lethbridge-Medicine Hat records lowest unemployment rate in province

Apr 9, 2020 | 4:40 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – Alberta as a whole has shed nearly 40,000 jobs last month compared to March 2019 but the Lethbridge-Medicine Hat region is bucking the trend with job growth over the same period, according to Statistics Canada’s latest Labour Force Survey.

The Lethbridge-Medicine Hat region’s unemployment rate for March is at 5.2 per cent – the lowest in the province.

The region saw 2,700 new jobs added year over year with all of those coming from full-time employment, according to Statistics Canada.

Sandra Blyth, Invest Medicine Hat’s economic development director, is a little skeptical about those numbers.

“Comparatively, when you look at the rest of the province, that 5.2 per cent looks pretty good for our region. Those numbers, of course, are linked in with Lethbridge which has always caused challenges as to what the accurate employment numbers are for the city,” said Blyth.

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Blyth added the city’s emergency response team set up to assist local business cope with the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic is busy helping employers trying to get through the current crisis.

“But when we look at that 5.2 (per cent unemployment rate) – that is really an economist that needs to explain that number to me,” said Blyth.

University of Lethbridge economics professor Richard Mueller says it’s not wrong to be a bit skeptical about the unemployment numbers with some of the more detailed Statistics Canada analytics painting a different picture of the days to come.

But he also added the region’s labour market has some built-in resilience due to the region’s biggest employers.

“It seems to me a lot of the employers in Medicine Hat are public sector employers – just like Lethbridge. You have the college, school districts, provincial government, municipal government, the hospital,” said Mueller. “So they aren’t going to be affected as much by these down swings in the economy – especially with the price of energy – as the rest of Alberta.”

Mueller doesn’t expect the numbers to get any better – in any region of the province – as the full impact of the coronavirus pandemic on employment is expected to be revealed in the April statistics that will be released early next month.

The Statistics Canada Medicine Hat-specific jobs report released on Thursday is also showing favourable employment numbers.

According to that report, last month saw an increase of more than 8,000 more individuals employed over March 2019 with a drop of 1,800 in the number of workers unemployed. Over that same time period, the unemployment rate dropped from 11 to 5.2 per cent.

Statistics Canada retooled some of its usual measures of counting employed, unemployed and “not in the labour force” to better gauge the effects of COVID-19 on the job market, which has been swift and harsh.