Alberta – 19,600 Job losses last year

Alberta suffered its worst year for employment losses since the dark days of the National Energy Program and early 1980s recession, revised labour figures from Statistics Canada show.

Statscan’s annual revisions of its national Labour Force Survey data ratcheted up Alberta’s job losses last year to 19,600, from the 14,600 the statistical agency originally reported in its final 2015 survey released in early January, as the province’s energy-driven economy buckled under the severe drop in oil prices.

Those losses exceed the 17,000 jobs Alberta shed in the Great Recession in 2009. It’s the worst year since 1982, when the province lost more than 45,000 jobs, amid the double-whammy of a global recession and the notorious NEP, a federal government program that capped prices, raised taxes and dramatically discouraged investment in the oil patch. A deep decline in investment in the sector has again been the key driver of the job losses in the past year.

Source: Alberta job losses last year worst since early 1980s recession: Statscan – BNN News