Alberta jobless rate balloons to 13.4% in April thanks to COVID-19 layoffs

Stats Canada releasing the unemployment figures for April  Friday morning (May 8) and the numbers, as expected are staggering.

Unlike the month before, the April data takes into account one full month of job losses fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The agency says Canada’s unemployment rate in April jumped to 13%, a number not seen since 1982. More than one-third of the potential labour force in this country was either not working at all or working less than half the usual hours.

The numbers show another two million Canadians lost their jobs in April. Couple that with one million job losses in March and that adds up to 3 million people in this country unemployed directly linked to the pandemic.

Here in Alberta, the jobless rate was even worse than the national picture, ballooning to 13.4% last month.

Locally, the Lethbridge-Medicine Hat rate increased to 6.8% which is a jump of almost two percentage points from March.

The Red Deer region is experiencing Alberta’s worst unemployment right now, sitting at 11%.

Alberta Jobless Rate by Region April 2020

Lethbridge-Medicine Hat: 6.8%
Camrose-Drumheller: 9.3%
Calgary: 10.8%
Banff-Jasper-Rocky Mountain House: 10.1%
Athabasca-Grande Prairie-Peace River: 10.1%
Red Deer: 11.0%
Edmonton: 10.1%
Wood Buffalo-Cold Lake: 7.9%