In Alberta, it has been pouring rain all week. I woke up this morning to clear skies and a surprisingly solid jobs report released by Statistics Canada at 6:30 MDT this morning.

Canadian employment rose 88K last month, smashing consensus expectations of a 10K increase. The job gain put a dent in the unemployment rate, which dipped 0.3 points to 6.6%.

The country needed this after a series of disappointing economic reports, including last week’s GDP contraction in Q1 and concerns surrounding a ‘technical recession’ (aside: likely not an actual recession, but it did meet the ‘technical’ definition of two straight quarterly declines).

The details of the jobs report were also positive. The gains were entirely in full-time positions (154K), and were broad-based across industries. Ontario, B.C. and Alberta led the improvement. More on Alberta below.

Now it’s time to (partly) spoil the party. It’s just one month, and the jobs data are notoriously volatile. Further, the gain comes after a string of job declines. Even with this jump, employment is still below the December level.

That said, given the tough economic data in recent days, this report shows the Canadian economy is down, but not out.

Keep in mind that the Canadian population growth has slowed to a crawl. With fewer job seekers, this means breakeven job growth needed to keep the unemployment rate flat is now much lower than before. Yet, despite this lower ‘jobs bar’, Canadian employment was still not rising enough to keep up. That changed last month, with employment rising faster than the labour force (those working or looking for work).

For the Bank of Canada, expect a hold next week. Even with the May job uptick, the economy is too weak to absorb a hike. Yet inflation pressures are too high to justify a cut. They’ll want more data on how the Iran War price shock will play out before moving off the sidelines.

Turning to Alberta, employment rose 13.9K—driven entirely by a 25.7K increase in full-time positions. Gains were concentrated in construction, healthcare, information and culture, and accommodation and food.

Last month, the job gain was enough to push the unemployment rate down to 6.6% from 7% in April. Recall that Alberta needs to churn out new jobs faster than the rest of Canada to prevent the jobless rate from rising, given more persistent population growth. One challenging area remains youth unemployment, still elevated at 15% last month (13.4% nationally).

The longer-term trend shows Alberta outperforming, and by a considerable margin. After surging in late 2025, employment has leveled out in recent months. Yet the province has avoided the declines experienced elsewhere in the country to start the year. As a result, the annual pace of job growth remains much higher in Alberta, especially compared to the other large provinces (see chart).  

Year-over-year employment growth in Alberta has been running north of 3% since January, with the rate accelerating to 4.1% last month—far outpacing the 0.7% national increase. The mix of annual job gains is entirely full-time, and led by the private sector. To put this in perspective, over the last 12 months, Canadian employment is up 147.1K, and Alberta accounts for 104.4K (or 71%) of that gain.

Interestingly, Alberta’s solid job growth is occurring despite very little movement in the oil and gas industry category (it’s called “forestry, fishing, mining, quarrying, oil and gas” but in Alberta, it’s mostly oil and gas). Even with the recent oil price spike, employment in the oil and gas category was down slightly last month and 2% below the May 2025 level. It’s true that the industry is running leaner, and maintaining capital discipline, but we see some upside given the uptick in rig activity. The average number of active drilling rigs in May 2026 was 118, up by 12.4% from May 2025.

Forecast implications

We’re putting the finishing touches on our June forecast, and this is the last critical data point. In March, we forecast that Alberta would be one of the provincial leaders in job and GDP growth—the data since then has only reinforced this narrative. We also said that this is the year the labour market would rebalance as employment more than keeps up with much slower population growth. That trend continues to unfold in the data. Based on today’s report, we see some upside to our March forecast of 3.1% annual employment growth, given the year-to-date reading of 3.6%. Stay tuned for our new forecast next week!  

By the numbers (all figures seasonally adjusted)

Canada

• Monthly employment change: +87.8K
• Year-over-year growth: 0.7%
• Unemployment rate: 6.6%

Alberta

• Monthly employment change: +13.9K
• Year-over-year growth: 4.1%
• Unemployment rate: 6.6%

Calgary CMA (3-month moving average)

• Monthly employment change: +2.1K
• Year-over-year growth: 6.3%
• Unemployment rate: 7.0%

Edmonton CMA (3-month moving average)

• Monthly employment change: +1.0K
• Year-over-year growth: 4.7%
• Unemployment rate: 7.1%

The trivia section will be in The Seven coming out later today.