Alberta's business calendar: A look at the week ahead
This week, Alberta's finance minister will deliver a fiscal update for the province, and Statistics Canada will release GDP numbers for the second quarter as well as job numbers for August, giving us a good sense where our economy stood over the spring and summer.
Monday
At 1:30 MT Monday, Alberta's finance minister Joe Ceci will deliver the fiscal update for the first quarter of the year. Alberta operates on a April 1- March 31 fiscal year, so this will cover the period of April through June, when oil prices were higher than they are now.
The budget delivered by the Prentice government in March forecast a $5 billion deficit.
Last week, Premier Rachel Notley said revenues were probably worse than Prentice had suggested. The release on Monday will give us a sense how much red ink we're talking about
Tuesday
On Tuesday morning, we will get the economic numbers for Canada for the month of June. That will complete the picture for the second quarter of the year and tell us whether the Canadian economy managed to avoid a recession.
A recession is technically defined as two consecutive quarters of economic decline. Canada's economy shrank in the first quarter of the year and in April and May, so it will take a very strong June in order to avoid a recession
There has been quite a discussion about whether a recession that is based in one sector — namely oil and gas — is a recession in the entire country.
Outside of Alberta, 100,000 jobs have been created in Canada this year.
Friday
Speaking of jobs, we will get the August jobs report on Friday from Statistics Canada.
The July report showed 4,300 jobs were lost in Alberta, and a modest 6,600 new jobs created nationwide. Canada's unemployment rate stayed steady at 6.8 per cent. Alberta's nudged higher to 6 per cent.
Statistics Canada numbers show roughly 24,000 jobs were lost in the natural resources sector in the past year.
The job and GDP reports in particular are likely to become part of the federal election campaign, in which the economy has become a major point of debate.
