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Lethbridge-Medicine Hat unemployment highest in Alberta in December at 10.5%

LETHBRIDGE, AB – Those beefed up COVID-19 restrictions the province imposed last month had a big impact on our local employment picture.

In December, this area saw its highest jobless rate since early on in the pandemic last spring.

Unemployment in the Lethbridge-Medicine Hat region increased to 10.5%, making it the highest in the province. That’s something we haven’t seen here in a very long time.

The jobs picture across Alberta isn’t much better, sitting at 11.0% in December.

From a national perspective, Canadian employment contracted for the first time since last April, with 63,000 less people working from coast to coast.

That puts the overall Canadian unemployment rate at 8.6%.

Statistics Canada says in December, 1.1 million Canadian workers were affected by the COVID-19 economic shutdown, in the form of lost employment or reduced hours, compared with 5.5 million in April.

Alberta Jobless Rate by Region in December 2020

Lethbridge-Medicine Hat: 10.5%
Camrose-Drumheller: 10.1%
Calgary: 10.1%
Banff-Jasper-Rocky Mountain House: 9.5%
Athabasca-Grande Prairie-Peace River: 9.5%
Red Deer: 9.6%
Edmonton: 10.4%
Wood Buffalo-Cold Lake: 8.3%

Patrick Siedlecki
Patrick Siedlecki
Pat has been a mainstay in the CJOC News department from the time the station launched in 2007. He's been in the position of News Director since then and has been anchoring daily news casts as well as reporting and working behind the scenes. Community is important to him and keeping CJOC listeners and readers informed about what's happening across southern Alberta and beyond. Pat has been in radio broadcasting for the past 24 years, starting in Port Alberni on Vancouver Island in 1997 and then moving up island to Nanaimo for another few years before heading to Lethbridge in 2007. Pat grew up in the small Saskatchewan farming town of Foam Lake. After high school, he went to Western Academy Broadcasting College (WABC) in Saskatoon prior to moving to the island. Pat also spent several years broadcasting hockey in the BCHL as well as seven years as the radio voice of the Lethbridge Hurricanes in the WHL. Pat has been working at Cornerstone Funeral Home in Lethbridge as a Certified Life Celebrant and Funeral Assistant since 2016. News and sports have always been Pat's passion from the time he was a teenager and he's always been grateful to have had the opportunity to make that part of what's been a fun and long radio career!
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