Alberta leads Canada in job gains amid separation talk

A year of separation talk hasn’t stood in the way of Alberta making big job gains, creating nearly eight in 10 new positions across the nation, according to new data from Statistics Canada.

Alberta added some 78,500 of 99,000 new jobs created nationwide over the past 12 months, the national statistics office said in its latest Labour Force Survey. Most of Alberta’s added jobs were in the private sector.

There were 2,677,300 people employed in Alberta in June 2026, up three per cent from one year earlier. Total employment across Canada grew by 0.5 per cent over the same period.

The strong provincial job numbers coincide with a year of uncertainty about Alberta’s future in Canada, with separatist groups galvanizing in the province after the Liberals won a fourth term in the spring 2025 federal election. Premier Danielle Smith announced in May that a separation question will appear as part of an Oct. 19 referendum ballot that will ask people if they want to stay in Canada or hold a later vote to separate.

Federalists have regularly warned throughout the past year that even the talk of separation puts Alberta jobs at risk.

Trevor Tombe, an economist at the University of Calgary, says that referendum talk is just one part of the noise employers are sifting through when making decisions about where to invest and hire new workers.

Tombe says that, for now, tariff anxieties outweigh separation worries, and cautions that Alberta’s job numbers may look deceptively strong when compared to figures from parts of Canada that have been hit harder by the U.S. trade war.

“Putting aside separation conversations in Alberta, the much more important economic drag nationally is trade uncertainty and tariffs in sectors like steel, aluminum, softwood lumber and non-U.S. auto content,” said Tombe.

British Columbia and Quebec shed a combined 67,000 jobs between June 2025 and June 2026.

Ontario fared somewhat better, adding close to 65,000 new jobs while seeing its labour force shrink slightly.

Roughly two-thirds of the new jobs in Alberta were in health care and social assistance industries. Employment in the province’s “forestry, fishing, mining, quarrying, oil and gas” category fell by 4.6 per cent year over year. Just 17,500 of the province’s 78,500 additional jobs were for public-sector positions.

Alberta has also been leading Canada in per capita housing starts in 2025 and 2024, breaking ground on a record number of dwellings each year.

Brendon Bernard, an economist at job site Indeed, says he hasn’t noticed any unusual activity in Alberta job postings over the last 12 months.

“I don’t see Alberta following different trends than the rest of Canada right now, as far as job postings go,” said Bernard.

Bernard said that low taxes, competitive wages and a reasonable relative cost of living continue to make the province an attractive place for both employers and workers. He noted that the province’s labour force has grown slightly faster than employment in the past year.

He said Alberta holds an especially strong edge on housing affordability.

“The median price in Toronto for a single detached home is $1.2 million. In Calgary, it’s $700,000. So that’s obviously going to play a role in where people choose to live and work,” said Bernard.

Bernard said that one occupational category that stuck out to him was child care, noting that Alberta listings for child-care jobs are growing at almost twice the rate as listings elsewhere in Canada. He added that wages for child-care workers in Alberta are also growing at a faster rate than other jurisdictions.

Over the three months ending in April 2026, payroll employment in child daycare services was up by 2,000 from a year earlier in Alberta, an 8.6 per cent increase, according to StatCan.

Since 2019, payroll employment in this industry is up 93 per cent in Alberta, compared to 44 per cent across Canada.

Private child-care providers operate roughly three-quarters of all child-care spaces in Alberta, the highest proportion in the country.

National Postrmohamed@postmedia.com

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