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Unemployment rate drops in Medicine Hat

Jun 9, 2017 | 11:08 AM

The Medicine Hat and Lethbridge regions have added more jobs in the last year.

According to newly-released employment statistics, the unemployment rate in May for the region has dropped to 5.9 per cent, down from 7.4 per cent in the previous year.

Compared to the rates across all provincial regions, Lethbridge-Medicine Hat was the lowest, with the highest at 9.1 per cent in Calgary.

On the local level, Medicine Hat had an unemployment rate of 6.2 per cent for May of 2017, down from 7.2 in April of 2017. In 2016, the May unemployment rate stood at 11.2.

Jon Sookocheff with Invest Medicine Hat says the numbers are a good sign the economic downturn has passed.

“The number of employed people in Medicine Hat is about the same as it was at its previous peak,” he said. “We have as many people working in Medicine Hat as we have ever had.

“Unemployment is coming down, and the number of unemployed is coming down.”

Sookocheff adds multiple industries are driving the increase in jobs.

“Obviously, the commercial construction (is driving it), all the building trades are busy at work on approximately $100 million worth of projects,” he said. “Agriculture and ranching is steady, and what we’re seeing is increasing activity relating to energy, both renewable and oil and gas.”

The statistics also indicated a total of 42.4 thousand people were employed in Medicine Hat, with around 2,800 in the workforce unemployed.

Nationally, the economy created a total of 54-thousand, 400 jobs in May. The national unemployment rate edged up to 6.6 per cent as more people started job hunting. The data also showed healthy gains in some of the survey’s more-desirable categories of private sector work and in the youth employment category.

Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec saw the biggest job gains.

-with files from the Canadian Press