The province that had previously had a boom in job availability is now facing astounding unemployment rates.
New research from Statistics Canada has shown that the province of Alberta has reached a tremendous increase in employment insurance recipients when compared to the rate in January 2015.
The Statistics Canada data has shown that the figure in January 2016 is a massive 91 percent higher.
In fact, across the country, the number of people receiving employment insurance has increased by 7 percent, but the majority of that figure is actually the result of the 91 percent rise specifically in Alberta. The figure was great enough in that single province that it caused the nationwide percentage to greatly rise. This is a direct and very unpleasant reflection of the unemployment situation that is currently being faced in that western province.
In January 2016, the total number of Canadians who were receiving employment insurance was 543,100
Among those people, 63,800 of them reside in Alberta. In Calgary, alone, there has been a 1.7 percent increase in EI recipients from one month to the next. In Edmonton, the capital of the province, there was a 2.4 percent increase in the number of recipients from one month to the next.
In comparison, British Columbia’s increase in recipients of this form of unemployment insurance protection increased by 6 percent. However, when looking at the trend from a month to month perspective, B.C. actually saw a decline in the number of recipients by 1.2 percent. Vancouver’s decrease was almost 2 percent per month while the Abbotsford-Mission region’s decreases were almost 5 percent. Throughout the rest of that province, there wasn’t much change in the overall rate of recipients of the insurance.
In Ontario, there were some significant decreases in the number of employment insurance recipients. As a whole, from December to January there was a drop by 4 percent. However, the Windsor and Thunder Bay areas both saw decreases of more than 7 percent. It is clear that this spiking trend in EI numbers is aimed specifically at Alberta and it helps to explain why people residing in that province have a notably darker impression of the economy than the average across the country.
