Alberta continued to lead all provinces in December with the highest average weekly earnings of non-farm payroll employees.
Statistics Canada reported on Wednesday that earnings in the province were $1,148.45, which was down 0.1 per cent from November and flat from a year ago.
“There were increases in many sectors, including health care and social assistance, manufacturing and retail trade. This growth was offset by employment declines in the high-paying construction and mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction sectors, as well as declines in average weekly earnings in construction. Alberta has had the highest average weekly earnings of all the provinces since May 2005, when it surpassed Ontario,” said the federal agency.
In Canada, average weekly earnings of $1,011.72 were up 0.1 per cent month over month and by 1.8 per cent year over year. In the mining, quarrying and oil and gas extraction sector, the average weekly earnings of $2,067.91 were down 0.5 per from November and off by 3.6 per cent from December 2017.
The number of employees in Canada fell by 20,000 from November but that was still up by 321,600 on an annual basis. Alberta saw a monthly decline of 3,500 but a hike of 14,100 employees year over year.
“The mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction sector encompasses three subsectors: oil and gas extraction; mining and quarrying; and support activities for these two subsectors. In December 2018, half (50 per cent) of the 201,100 payroll employees of this sector were in Alberta, followed by Ontario (13.3 per cent). As a proportion of all payroll employees, the mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction sector was most prevalent in Alberta (five per cent of all payroll employees in the province), followed by Saskatchewan (3.6 per cent) and Newfoundland and Labrador (2.6 per cent),” said StatsCan.
“Compared with 12 months earlier, the number of payroll employees was little changed in the sector in December – despite declines in Alberta (-three per cent) and Saskatchewan (-1.6 per cent). The decrease in employment in the oil and gas subsector (-4.3 per cent) was offset by increases in the mining and quarrying subsector (+1.1 per cent) as well as in support activities (+1.9 per cent). The average number of hours worked per week decreased from 40.6 hours in December 2017 to 38.7 hours in December 2018.”
– Mario Toneguzzi
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
