CALGARY—A Statistics Canada study suggests that the lure of jobs in Alberta’s energy sector isn’t enough to persuade most out-of-province workers to make a permanent move.
The study found there were plenty of people moving to Alberta between 2004 and 2009. But only one in four who moved there for work decided to make Alberta their primary residence. They listed their home province on their tax returns.
“While some of the interprovincial workers observed in this study subsequently made a residential move to Alberta, at least as identified on their T1 tax return, most did not,” wrote the authors, Christine Laporte, Yuqian Lu, and Grant Schellenberg.
“It is likely that factors such as family ties, social networks, organizational arrangements (e.g. daycare, school enrolment), home ownership and quality of life were important factors,” they wrote.
“Nonetheless, the prospects of readily available jobs elsewhere had appeal. When weighed against the costs of moving inter-provincially, the benefits of working inter-provincially was the option chosen by these individuals,” said the report.
“Quite clearly, people react to employment opportunities in various ways, and, more broadly, labour markets adjust in various ways.”
About three-quarters of the job seekers were men under the age of 35 from British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Atlantic Canada. Roughly half of those were employed in construction and oil and gas extraction. More than one-third of female interprovincial employees were working in accommodation and food services or retail trade.
In 2004, there were between 62,000 and 67,500 interprovincial employees in Alberta, accounting for about 3.8 percent of provincial employment. By 2008, the number of interprovincial employees had increased to a peak of 133,000, making up 6.2 percent of the workforce. The figures fell somewhat in 2009 following the recession.
Alberta’s booming energy sector, tied largely to development of the oil sands in northern Alberta, has created a chronic shortfall of qualified workers in recent years. As a result, there has been an increased reliance on temporary foreign workers.
More than 330,000 workers live and work in Canada as part of the federal temporary foreign worker program—a number that has nearly tripled over the last 10 years, with the bulk of those job seekers going to Alberta in search of work.
With files from The Canadian Press
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