Alberta business calendar: jobs, jobs, jobs
There were a lot of job cuts in the energy sector in September. TransCanada. Cenovus, Penn West, PHX Energy, Conoco Phillips, and TransAlta are just a few of the big names that reported layoffs in the month, with losses adding up to more than 2,000 positions.
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers said that 35,000 oil patch jobs have been lost over the past year.
However, Alberta's job market has been flexible. While it's been shedding jobs in oil and gas, it has added them in the service and public sector. Over the past year, there's been a net addition of 41,000 jobs in Alberta.
The province's unemployment rate has gone up to six per cent, but according to Statistics Canada, that's because more people have entered the job market looking for work.
At the same time, Albertans' wages have started to drop, as people move from higher paying energy jobs to those with lower salaries.
The official numbers show that non oil and gas sectors of the economy have absorbed much of the losses from the energy sector.
On Friday, Stats Can will release the official job numbers for September, which will show if that trend continued.
