Alberta drove Canada’s job growth in the fourth quarter—and its booming population is the key reason why. 

Canada recorded its largest employment bump in nearly two years in December, blowing past analyst expectations with 91,000 new jobs. It was a surprising sign of strength after months of mediocre employment growth. 

Perhaps more surprising was Alberta’s outsized contribution. The province generated 35,000 new jobs—or roughly 38 per cent of Canada’s total—in the final month of 2024.

The trend was even more pronounced across the entire quarter: Alberta, with a population just shy of five million, contributed 72,000 jobs over the period, or 46 per cent of Canada’s 157,000 total new positions. Ontario, with a population of more than 16 million, added 6,800, and Quebec (population: 8.9 million) added about 43,000. British Columbia pitched in 23,000.

While Alberta’s employment gains helped stave off a continued slump in Canada’s labour market, the province’s rapid jobs growth papers over some deeper weaknesses across the country. 

December’s national employment rate—the proportion of Canadians that are employed—improved to 60.8 per cent, but that followed a steady decline stretching all the way back to January 2023. Unemployment has ticked higher, and in November reached 6.8 per cent, the highest since January 2017 excluding pandemic peaks, according to Statistics Canada.

Alberta’s population explosion

High population growth across Canada has kept greater numbers of people employed, even if rates of employment are declining and unemployment rising. That’s particularly true of Alberta, which has seen historically high inflows of newcomers, both from other provinces and internationally. 

In the third quarter of 2023, Alberta’s net migration reached a new high of 55,900, nearly double its previous 2013 peak. In the last three years, its population has surged by about 480,000 to 4.93 million—a more than 10 per cent increase.

Mark Parsons, chief economist at ATB Financial, said Alberta’s population surge is being driven in part by its affordability compared to other provinces, particularly in housing, which has in turn fed employment growth. 

“Alberta started to add jobs at a faster rate than the rest of the country, and that created the perfect environment for record inflows of people,” he said. 

Rising employment in oil and gas and construction are driving much of the boom, Parsons said, as well as a range of other sectors including petrochemicals, tech and tourism. 

Like much of the rest of Canada, Alberta’s employment rate has weakened over the past year. Yet unemployment fell between October and December, from 7.3 to 6.7 per cent, while it increased in nearly all other provinces over the same period. 

The job market feels great, if you’re employed

Meanwhile, with business investment down and job vacancies drying up, unemployed people across Canada are feeling increasingly negative about their prospects, said Brendon Bernard, senior economist at Indeed. 

The result has been a growing wedge between “job seeker versus job stayer,” as Bernard puts it. 

According to a recent Indeed survey, 44 per cent of job seekers were confident they could find work quickly, down from about 51 per cent from 2022 to early 2024. Perhaps with good reason: the number of Canadian workers who have been out of work for more than six months rose to 3.2 per cent in November, according to Bernard, up from 2.5 per cent two years earlier. The same trend has persisted in the U.S. 

At the same time, businesses are posting fewer job openings, but have not yet cut back their workforces through layoffs. The result is that employed people are staying put, and are less likely to seek new work opportunities.

“People aren’t changing jobs, they’re hunkering down in the jobs they’re in,” said Michelle Brooks, chief people and culture officer at Security Compass, a cybersecurity firm. 

Tech goes against the grain in 2025

Despite a weakening job market, Brooks said tech hiring could rise in the coming year, so long as Canada avoids any major economic downturn. 

“Early signs are showing more positive investor engagement, more positive results, and companies are starting to hire a little bit more,” she said. 

Tech is already one of the faster-growing sectors for employment, and following the mass layoffs after the pandemic, the talent market is back to balance. That altered the relationship between employers and the skilled workers they’re seeking to hire, and returned leverage to the businesses doing the hiring.

“Candidates held all the power if you go back a couple of years ago, and now the tech layoffs made it more of an even power distribution.” 

That could mean businesses won’t face the same pressure to meet the steep salary demands tech workers demanded as recently as 2023—and could give recruiters more flexibility around arrangements like back-to-work mandates.

Talent Quarterly is The Logic’s regular series on the Canadian job market,  focusing on workforce trends and the talent challenges that managers face.