In light of it being International Women’s Day, today’s Owl examines how the job situation of women and men in Alberta has changed over the course of the pandemic by comparing labour force metrics in January 2020 (before the pandemic began) to January 2022 (the most recent data on hand).

Before doing so, it is important to note that the percentage of jobs lost by women was higher than men during the early months of the pandemic with the number of men employed in the province falling by 12.9% between January 2020 and April 2020 compared to 17.1% for the number of women. As such, female workers had a larger gap to close than their male counterparts.

With that in mind, female workers in Alberta have experienced a more pronounced labour market recovery than male workers.

The number of women in the labour force has increased by 3.2% since January 2020 while the number of men in the job market is about the same. When we factor in population growth, the result is an increase in the female participation rate (from 65.3% to 65.6%) and a decrease in the male rate (from 75.3% to 73.5%).

Meanwhile, the number of jobs held by women is up by 3.1% compared to an increase of just 0.5% for jobs held by men.

Zeroing in on full-time positions, the number full-time jobs held by women is up by 3.9% compared to a drop of 1.4% for men.

However, because of the uptick in the number of women in the labour force, the female unemployment rate is still a bit higher than in January 2020 (7.5% compared to 7.4% two years ago) while the male rate is lower (7.0% versus 7.6%).

Nationally, the situation is different with the recovery among male workers somewhat stronger than among female workers. The number of jobs in Canada held by men in January 2022 verus January 2020 is 0.7% higher compared to 0.1% lower for women.

Answer to the previous trivia question: As of last year there were approximately 7.8 million  single-detached homes in Canada.

Today’s trivia question: In what year did Japan become the first country to completely ban lead in gasoline?