EDMONTON – Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) president Gil McGowan made the following statement in response to the release of the May 2024 Labour Force Survey by the Government of Canada:

“A loss of 33,000 full-time jobs in May is disturbing. When other provinces are seeing job growth and Alberta’s energy industry is seeing huge profits, our province is not supposed to be seeing jobs disappear. We have the third worst unemployment rate among Canadian provinces.

“Furthermore, people are coming to this province to find employment. Alberta’s over-15 population grew by 4.7 per cent year-over-year, and employment has not increased fast enough to keep up (+2.7 per cent). People are coming to Alberta for jobs we’re not creating.

“The UCP plan to somehow miraculously create jobs by cutting taxes for the corporate sector, suppressing wages, and throwing up roadblocks for renewable energy jobs is clearly not working. You don’t need to rely on surveys to find this out: Alberta workers will tell you the same thing.

“We need a government who will end wage suppression, create new jobs with a diversified energy economy, and end an overreliance on cheap labour through guest worker programs. That’s a start on the path to getting Albertans back to work.”

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MEDIA CONTACT:
John Ashton
Director of Communications, AFL
Email: jashton@afl.org