Alberta is on track to hit a staggering 25 per cent unemployment rate as businesses continue to shed jobs amid the global COVID-19 pandemic coupled with historically low oil prices, Premier Jason Kenney said Tuesday.
Alberta is on track to hit a staggering 25 per cent unemployment rate as businesses continue to shed jobs amid the global COVID-19 pandemic coupled with historically low oil prices, Premier Jason Kenney said Tuesday.
“The shutdown in much of our economy is having a devastating impact,” Kenney said to attendees of an online energy conference Tuesday morning.
“Based on some polling that we’ve done and some analysis, I fully expect unemployment in Alberta to be at least 25 per cent, at least half a million unemployed Albertans.”
If that happens, it would mark the highest unemployment rate in any Canadian province since modern records began.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, the highest rate recorded by Statistics Canada since 1976 was in Newfoundland and Labrador, which hit 22.7 per cent unemployment in September 1984.
Alberta’s highest unemployment rate to date was 12.4 per cent, also in September 1984.
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