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Alberta’s job market is a powerhouse. We had the highest employment rate in the country last year with 66.7 per cent of our population age 15 and over working at a job. That’s five percentage points above the national average and 16 points higher than the lowest rate which is found in Newfoundland and Labrador. If we had the same employment rate as the national average, there would be 187,000 fewer Albertans with jobs. And it’s not just a blip. We’ve had the highest employment rate of any province every year since at least 1976. This is a remarkable record and points to the ability of the Alberta economy to supply not just Albertans–but Canadians and immigrants who migrate to the province–with much-needed jobs. An economy that can generate jobs is, however, only half of the equation. You also need a labour force that meets the needs of employers in terms of education, skills and experience. For the most part, employers in Alberta find the people they need, but when the economy is booming–and even when it’s not–skilled labour shortages can be a problem. At the same time, as the economy evolves in response to new technology, jobs are both destroyed and created. This can leave workers scrambling to obtain the right education, skills and experience to fill new jobs. Take agricultural jobs in Alberta. Better equipment, techniques and agricultural science have seen the number of farm workers in Alberta go from 88,900 in 1997 to 50,800 in 2016–a drop of 43 per cent–while inflation-adjusted agricultural output increased by 63 per cent. As a result, people who would have otherwise worked as farmers have had to find jobs in other sectors. Fortunately, increased use of more sophisticated computer systems helps explain the rise in the number of Albertans with “professional, scientific and technical service” jobs (which include computer system design and support). The number of jobs in this sector went from 85,400 in 1997 to 179,300 in 2016–an increase of 110 per cent. New technology taketh away, but it also giveth. The challenge is to be as ready as possible for the next wave of change which, by most accounts, will be driven by rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and the increased automation it will make possible. As the use of AI increases, Alberta’s job market will be affected in three main ways. First, some jobs will disappear. Large numbers of truck drivers, for example, may be replaced by autonomous trucks. Second, new jobs will be created. People will, for example, be needed to design, maintain, operate and train others to use the software and hardware that makes an autonomous truck system work. Third, many existing jobs will involve the use of more AI applications. A human resources specialist, for example, may use AI to help screen job applicants. AI promises to increase productivity, improve services and open doors to new ventures and jobs. But, as with all technological change, there will be winners and losers. For there to be more winners than losers, employers, educators, parents, students and workers need to prepare themselves as much as possible for what’s coming. How do we do this? Education in all its forms is going to be the critical factor. Businesses, nonprofits and government departments need to offer AI training to their staff. Our schools need to be imparting the hard and soft skills workers will need to flourish alongside AI applications. Students and employees need to be proactive and learn about AI and the changes it’s bringing. Our businesses and entrepreneurs also need to be looking for ways to take advantage of new technology and create jobs that will harness it. And all of us need to keep up with the technology as best we can so we are not left behind. This doesn’t mean we have to buy every new gadget that comes out or accept all change as inevitable. Quite the opposite. We need to make sure that AI is improving our lives, not making them worse. But we must also avoid the future equivalent of having to call our grandkids to change the clock on our VCR. If we do these things, our economy will be able to generate new jobs and our workers will have the skills needed to fill them. If we don’t, others will seize the opportunities, and our prosperity will erode accordingly. This post is written by guest writer Rob Roach, ATB Financial's Director of Insight.  Image: Pixabay
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 Image: Pexels/Pixabay It's summer, and Albertans are enjoying the bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables. But those berries, beets and bananas come at a price. Year over year, fresh fruit prices are up modestly (+1.4 per cent), but fresh vegetables are up a whopping 7.7 per cent! Some of the reason why fresh produce prices are up is due to higher transportation costs. Most of our fresh vegetables come from Mexico or California. Fuel costs are higher, and they're being passed on to consumers. The softer Canadian dollar is also a factor. What can shoppers do? 1. Where possible, buy local. It might not be pineapple or papaya, but our farmers can grow a wide variety of fruits and veggies—and they don't need to be shipped thousands of miles. 2. Grow your own. Many of us already keep gardens, but there's a lot that even high-density urban dwellers can do. It takes a bit of work, but fresh patio tomatoes and strawberries are delicious. 3. Re-discover canning and preserves. There's a reason Albertans have managed to live here for generations—they made it through the winter by canning, freezing and keeping vegetables in cold storage. We live in a world where strawberries, grapes and lettuce can arrive from anywhere in the world, even in the middle of January. But being price conscious in the grocery store means we take a second look at all of the incredible fruits and vegetables that can be grown right in our backyards. Todd talked about this recently as part of The Hoot, a regular radio segment on Calgary Today on Newstalk770 with Angela Kokott and on 630 CHED with J'lynNye and Andrew Grose.  Image: Calgary Library Foundation Twitter (@LibraryFdnYYC ) "We shape our buildings; thereafter, they shape us." -Winston Churchill Calgary has seen some substantial investment in new buildings lately, many of them public spaces (the National Music Centre, the new downtown library). But there's more to urban architecture than having fancy buildings. There's a strong economic imperative to it as well. Urban aesthetics matter to the attractiveness of a city, and thus to attracting newcomers. Attracting and retaining people - especially the young, talented and educated people who can go anywhere-is crucial. (In the recent Amazon second headquarters contest, Amazon explicitly looked for cities that are interesting and appealing to young tech workers.) The question usually boils down to finances—and in the case of public buildings/spaces, how many tax dollars should go to building amazing structures. It's a good debate to have, but the answer must never be "build the cheapest thing possible." Buildings and public spaces are with us for a long time. Certainly adding millions to the price of a project is a choice we have to make prudently. But because they are permanent decisions, the public buildings we choose to build should be inspiring and interesting. They should bring people together in community. Ugly, utilitarian structures may be cheaper to slap up, but they come with a higher economic cost in the long run. Todd talked about this recently as part of The Hoot, a regular radio segment on Calgary Today on Newstalk770 with Angela Kokott and on 630 CHED with J'lynNye and Andrew Grose. Three key things stand out when taking a “30,000 foot” perspective on Alberta’s labour force: First is the importance of Alberta as an engine of job creation. The number of jobs in Alberta has–on average–grown by 2.5 per cent per year since 1976. The average for the rest of Canada is 1.5 per cent. That might not seem like a huge difference, but if the number of jobs in Alberta had grown at the same rate as in the rest of Canada, there would be 736,000 fewer jobs in the province today. That’s a lot of additional jobs for Albertans and for the thousands of people from other parts of Canada and the world who have come here to make a better life. Second, from agriculture and tourism to our universities and entrepreneurs, there are lots of reasons why Alberta’s economy has grown (and will keep growing). But the reason we have been able to outperform the rest of the country on job growth is our oil and gas sector and the economic activity it supports. The walloping our labour market has taken because of the 2015-16 recession drives this point home. Oil prices plummeted and the number of jobs in the sectors that depend on the oil industry shrank. Third, the recession was painful and we are still feeling it. At 6.6 per cent in March, we had the highest unemployment rate in the country outside of Atlantic Canada. That’s a lot better than the 9.0 per cent we reached in November 2016, but it’s still high by Alberta standards. Alberta also had the longest average length of unemployment in the country in 2017 at 23.1 weeks (up from 14.5 weeks in 2014) compared to 19.6 weeks nationally. What’s more, we are still 28,000 jobs short of where we were in June 2015 (the peak) and this doesn’t account for the fact that our working age population has grown by 3.0 per cent since then. Why does this matter? As Albertans, we should be proud of the contribution we've made to Canada’s job growth over the last four decades. It is also worth reminding ourselves and our neighbours that when the oil and gas sector falters, our ability to create jobs also falters. Finally, while the recession is over (Alberta’s GDP grew by 4.9 per cent last year), it does not feel that way to everyone and we are not “back to normal” on the job front. You can find more analysis of Alberta’s labour force in the latest edition of Perch and the accompanying extended report on atb.com/economics This post is written by guest writer Rob Roach, ATB Financial's Director of Insight.  Image: rawpixel/Pixabay We know the recession cut deeply into vehicle sales in Alberta. After all, with nearly one in 10 people out of work, motorists were forced to curb spending. But that didn’t stop us from buying cars and trucks altogether--we just altered what KIND of vehicle we bought. Sales of new vehicles plunged 18 per cent between 2014 and 2016. At the same time, sales of used vehicles rose by 10 per cent. And because the volume of used vehicle sales is almost double that of new, the effect was that TOTAL sales (i.e., new and used combined) barely fell at all. This switch from new to used vehicles also happened in the recession of 2008-09. In fact, new vehicle purchases were hit even harder. After hitting a record high in 2007, new vehicle sales dropped 27 per cent by 2009, while used vehicles continued to rise. Sales of new vehicles didn’t fully recover for four more years. The substitution from new to used cars and trucks is not surprising during an economic downturn (that fresh new car smell comes at a price). But as Alberta’s economy gradually claws its way back, new vehicle sales are rising once again, reaching 11 per cent in 2017.  Image: manfredrichter/Pixabay There's always a lot of attention paid to wages and jobs in the oil and gas sector. But what about at the other end of the pay scale? How have Albertans earning low wages fared through the recession and now into the rebound? Over the last five years, (Feb'13 to Feb'18) workers in the two lowest paying sectors—retail, and accommodation and food—have seen their average weekly earnings increase. But the two have moved in different ways. Weekly earnings in retail are up 12.2 per cent from five years ago. That compares favourably against the provincial average of 5.6 per cent. However, workers in accommodation and food have barely seen an increase in weekly earnings at all--a small gain of 3.5 per cent. That hasn't even kept up with inflation. At the same time, total hours are up 0.4 hours for retail workers, and down 1.8 for accommodation and food. So what's the upshot to all of this? Trends over the last five years—which involved a nasty recession and a jump in the minimum wage—seem to have been positive for retail workers. They are working a few more hours and earning higher weekly paycheques. But it has been negative for those in accommodation and food. They're working fewer hours on average, and their paycheques have barely risen. If there's a positive note for accommodation and food workers, it is that there's little evidence to suggest jobs are being lost. Total employment is up 10.3 per cent for accommodation and food compared to five years ago.  Image credit: StockSnap/Pixabay  Image: Akiroq/Pixabay International trade gets a lot of attention–and rightly so. Alberta’s international exports and imports added up to $181 billion in 2016. But our domestic trade is also significant with $129 billion worth of goods and services exchanged between Alberta and other parts of Canada in 2016 (Statistics Canada, CANSIM table 384-0038).
Alberta is, moreover, a good customer–buying $4 billion more goods and services from other parts of Canada than they sold to us. British Columbia’s exports to Alberta, for example, add up to 44 per cent of its total trade with the rest of Canada while Alberta’s exports to BC represent 23 per cent of our trade with the rest of the country. (Statistics Canada, CANSIM table 386-0003 - Note that the most recent statistics on the trade between specific provinces are for 2014). Our largest trading partner is Ontario. Albertans purchased $35 billion worth of goods and services from Ontarians in 2014 and sold them $27 billion worth in return. Not surprisingly, Alberta’s main interprovincial exports are “mineral fuels” (a.k.a. oil, natural gas and coal and refined petroleum products such as gasoline, diesel and asphalt. These products account for over a third of our domestic exports. Ontario is the destination of about half of Alberta’s mineral fuel/petroleum product exports followed by British Columbia (17 per cent) and Saskatchewan (15 per cent). Finance and insurance services such as investment services, life insurance and auto insurance is the single largest category of imports into Alberta from the rest of the country (12 per cent of our total interprovincial imports) followed by wholesale services (11 per cent), professional services (eight per cent) and transportation services (also eight per cent). A fair amount of food also goes back and forth. Albertans sold $5.4 billion worth of food and non-alcoholic beverages to other Canadians and purchased $5.6 billion in return. Why does this matter? It’s important to remember that we not only buy and sell from other countries but other Canadians as well and the benefits of free trade apply within Canada as well as on the international stage. We should, in turn, be working to keep this trade as open and efficient as possible. It’s also a good reminder for our friends in the rest of the country that Alberta is a good customer as well as a key supplier of critical products and services. This post is written by guest writer Rob Roach, ATB Financial's Director of Insight. We’ve talked before about how economic trends play out differently in different parts of our province. With the recession over a year behind us, it’s a good time to see how the recovery has been unfolding and what the “new normal” looks like in different parts of Alberta.
One way to look at this is in terms of population change. Generally speaking, more is better from an economic perspective when it comes population. Population growth is good for retail stores, for construction companies, for house prices and so on. When we look at Alberta as a whole, our population is growing and -- for an advanced economy like ours -- it’s doing so at a rapid rate. Alberta’s population is 4.3 per cent bigger than it was in 2014. Canada as a whole grew by 3.3 per cent over the same period and Newfoundland grew by only 0.1 per cent. So we are doing pretty good in this sense. But not everywhere in Alberta is growing at the same rate. Some places are shrinking. Looking at Alberta communities with at least 1,000 people, population change between 2014 and 2017 ranges from a drop of 25 per cent in Northern Sunrise County (which is near Peace River) to an increase of 30 per cent on the Tsuut’ina Nation reserve next to Calgary. Our two largest cities, Calgary and Edmonton, grew by 4 per cent and 6 per cent, respectively. The hardest hit communities in terms of population loss are those that rely heavily on nearby oil and gas projects. Lac La Biche County, which shrank by 22 per cent, and the Bonnyville District, which shrank by 12 per cent, are prime examples. For McMurray shrank by 1 per cent. The end of coal mining has also seen the populations of places like Grande Cache, Hanna and Drumheller contract. The fastest growing places tend to be either First Nations communities or smaller centres located near larger cities. The population of Nobleford, a bedroom community near Lethbridge, spiked 28 per cent. Chestermere, Cochrane and Airdrie near Calgary, Spruce Grove near Edmonton, and Blackfalds near Red Deer posted growth between 18 and 27 per cent. We see a similar pattern with employment. Smaller centres dependent on oil, gas and coal have fewer people working today than they did in 2014. Why does this matter? The good news is that Alberta’s population has been growing and will likely continue to do so. The bad news is that not every community is growing with many of our smaller centres dependent on the energy sector seeing an actual outflow of residents. So even though our GDP is up, oil prices are up and the population as a whole is up, rural areas that depend on fossil fuel extraction are still hurting. This post is written by guest writer Rob Roach, ATB Financial's Director of Insight. Statistics Canada recently released detailed income statistics from the 2016 Census. What are they telling us? Alberta stands out with the highest median incomes among the provinces. This is the case across all family types and before and after income tax is subtracted. The median household income in Alberta in 2015 was $93,800. The number for Canada as a whole was $70,300 -- $23,500 less. Adjusted for inflation, income was up in every province in 2015 compared to 2005. The median household income in Alberta grew by 24 per cent over this period. Only Saskatchewan (37 per cent) and Newfoundland (29 per cent) outpaced Alberta’s growth. The growth rate for the country was 11per cent. Calgary had a slightly higher median income than Edmonton ($99,600 vs. $94,500) but the Census Agglomeration of Wood Buffalo (which includes Fort McMurray) had by far the highest at a whopping $193,500. The median income of unattached individuals (a.k.a. people who live alone) was $54,400 in Alberta compared to $134,700 in Fort McMurray (it was $38,000 for Canada as a whole). This reflects the large number of unattached Canadians who move to Fort McMurray to take high-paying jobs in the oil patch. We don’t have income data for 2016, but we do know that the number of earners in Fort McMurray in the top 1 per cent of Canadian earners fell by 43 per cent between 2014 and 2015 from 5,460 to 3,130. The effects of provincial recession of 2015-16 would also have been felt at lower income levels. These income statistics show once again that Alberta is an economic force and one that has benefited the rest of the country as hundreds of thousands of Canadians have moved here over the years to find good jobs and enjoy higher incomes. Recession or not, Alberta is a place of opportunity. It's also important to note that median incomes are up since 2005 -- even after taking into account inflation and income taxes. We tend to focus on the negative and it might seem like income and the standard of living it makes possible have been spiralling downward, but the opposite is the reality. This is something to celebrate. With that said, not everyone in Alberta is raking it in. Many are still reeling from the recession and almost 1 in 10 Albertans lives in a low-income household. We still have a lot of work to do to make sure everyone in Alberta is able to fully participate in the economic opportunities found here. And we can’t forget that our prosperity going forward is far from a given. Hard work, creative thinking and good public policy will be needed to keep Alberta’s economy strong in the decades ahead. This post is written by guest writer Rob Roach, ATB Financial's Director of Insight.  Todd received an Honorary Bachelor of Arts degree from Mount Royal University on June 2, 2017. He delivered the following address to the MRU graduating class at Convocation.
It’s an honour for me to address the MRU graduating class of 2017. I've been given a few minutes to offer some words that, I trust, will be helpful for you as you leave this chapter of post-secondary education and look towards new beginnings. You might expect an economist to offer insights into what we can expect for our economy, or maybe some ideas about the hot jobs of 2017. Instead, I'm going to speak on punctuation. The secret to a successful career can be summed up in three simple pieces of punctuation common in the English language. It’s how we end our sentences. The first is the period, or as the British say, the full stop. A period comes at the end of a sentence and signals the completion of an idea. It is time to stop. Pause. Rest. In your careers and in your life, remember to take the occasional pause. Do nothing. Put away the phone. Be still and mindful. Just. Stop. You might do this with the occasional vacation or retreat. You may practise daily meditation, prayer or reflection. Whatever you do, do it intentionally. A pause is beautiful when you embrace it—because in fact, it embraces you. The second piece of punctuation you'll need for a successful career is the question mark, that curly little squiggle that suggests inquiry. Wisdom is not measured by the answers we give, but rather the questions we ask. Never stop being curious. Explore ideas. Be creative. Conjure your inner three-year-old self by asking, "Why? Why? Why"? Most importantly, remember to ask questions of yourself. Question your motives, your assumptions, your actions. Are they beneficial to everyone involved? Do they lift up others as they lift up you? Self-awareness requires a steady use of the question mark. Finally, a successful career employs the exclamation mark. Now, the exclamation mark has changed in our language in a subtle way. It used to be reserved for angry directives. When you employed the exclamation mark, you were shouting -- and not always kindly. Certainly, there’s a time for anger and shouting. But even this negativity can be harnessed to bring about a positive outcome. More contemporary English, however, uses the exclamation mark less as anger, and more as enthusiasm. This has been spurred on in our use of social media. You might tweet LOL! Or text your friend "Looking forward to seeing you Friday!" It implies a positive and enthusiastic tone. Success in life requires enthusiasm. It demands we live our lives each day aware of the possibilities and opportunities--and those situations require the exclamation mark. So this is the secret to success in the careers that lie ahead of you, boiled down to three simple bits of punctuation:
Yet, there remains a fourth piece of punctuation we must bear in mind. The ellipsis, the three little dots that trail off at the end of a sentence implying that there is something more-- something that, for now, is left unexplored. There is always more to the story. When you dig in your heels on some issue, or harden your political or religious belief, remember the ellipsis as used in these sentences: "Have you considered..." "There are other perspectives..." "I've given this more thought..." This isn't to say it's wrong to hold strongly to your convictions. But the ellipsis reminds us that there is always something yet to be considered. The period, the question mark, the exclamation mark and the ellipsis. Use these liberally as you start your careers and life journeys. All the rest -- the dash, the semi-colon, the possessive apostrophe--are just details. They’re important too, but if you get the others right, they fall into place on their own. Thank you, and congratulations to the MRU Graduating Class of 2017 ! |