Yesterday’s Owl  highlighted some of the key differences between job growth* in Alberta and Canada over the last decade.

Today’s Owl zeros-in on the sectors in Alberta that have seen the most job growth since 2012.

Service-producing industries have been the main source of job growth in the province.

In absolute terms, the health care and social assistance sector added the most paid employees between 2012 and 2022 at almost 65,000.

Retail trade (+20,057), educational services (+19,210), transportation and warehousing (+16,990), and unclassified** businesses (+12,691) round out the five sectors that added the most jobs in the province.

Although Alberta’s manufacturing sector shed 12,955 jobs overall between 2012 and 2022, several sub-sectors added workers, including food manufacturing (+3,026), chemical manufacturing (+2,224), beverage manufacturing (+1,966), and plastic manufacturing (+466).

Nationally, the five industries that added the most paid employees were: health care and social assistance (+506,609), professional, scientific and technical services (+354,826), construction (+222,163), educational services (+218,460), and public administration (+172,994).

*The job growth data in yesterday’s and today’s Owl are drawn from Statistics Canada’s Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours (SEPH). The SEPH includes “businesses in Canada that have at least one employee and, thus issued at least one payroll deduction remittance during the reference month. Excluded are businesses that are primarily involved in agriculture, fishing and trapping, private household services, religious organizations, international and other extraterritorial public administration and military personnel of defence services.”

**Unclassified businesses are businesses for which the industrial classification has yet to be determined.

Answer to the previous trivia question: Sometimes called prairie wool, rough fescue (Festuca scabrellais) is a perennial bunchgrass found in Alberta and is the official grass emblem of the province.

Today’s trivia question: Which Pink Floyd album was released in the United States on March 1, 1973?