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Regional unemployment rate rose almost one percent between December and January

Feb 8, 2019 | 9:06 AM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – Jobless rates in the region rose almost a full percentage point in one month.

The latest labour force statistics have been released. In Alberta, the unemployment rate in December 2018 was 6.4%. Last month, that went up to 6.8%, according to the Statistic Canada assessment.

The change was much more drastic in the Lethbridge-Medicine Hat region.

In December of last year, the unemployment rate was listed at 4.5%.

Last month, the rate was at 5.4%, almost a full percentage point jump. However, those numbers are not as high as a year ago. In January 2018, the jobless rate for the region was listed at 6.6%.

The statistics show that Camrose-Drumheller has the highest unemployment rate of all the economic regions in the province. For last month, the rate was at 7.8%, an increase of 0.8% from December.

In January 2018, the jobless rate in the Camrose-Drumheller region was only 4.9%.

In Calgary, the unemployment rate was at 7.3% last month, while in Edmonton, it was at 6.4%.

Some of the major industry leaders in Alberta, as far as employment goes, include forestry, fishing, mining, oil and gas, as well as construction, manufacturing, the trades, health care and social assistance.

The full statistics for Alberta can be found through the provincial government’s website.

Across Canada, the unemployment was for January 2019 was highest in Newfoundland and Labrador, at 11.4%. This was followed up by Nova Scotia at 9.9% and New Brunswick at 8.2%.

The unemployment rate for all of Canada last month was listed at 5.8%, up from the 43-year low of 5.6% in December 2018.

The provinces with the highest employment rate for last month were Alberta (66.5%), Saskatchewan (64.9%) and Manitoba (63.8%).

According to Statistics Canada, there were 18, 873, 900 people working last month across all of Canada, with 1,162,000 people unemployed.

There was a surge of 66,800 net new jobs across the country, but many Canadians were still left searching for work.

The jobless rate, in Canada, for men 25 years of age or older was 5.2%. For women 25 and over, the rate was 4.6%. In Alberta, the rates were 6.7% (men) and 5.3% (women).

The nation-wide data can be viewed through Statistics Canada’s website.