The shine is off a province that now offers sluggish wages and Canada’s fastest inflation.
“Think I’ll go out to Alberta, weather’s good there in the fall, I got some friends that I can go to workin’ for…”
That’s not just a famous lyric by Ian Tyson. For years it’s been a siren song luring workers from other parts of Canada in search of a better life. From B.C. to Cape Breton, thousands of workers would migrate to Alberta each year in search of better jobs and higher wages.
In recent years, however, Alberta’s reputation as a promised land for workers has taken a battering, as documented in my report “The Alberta Wage Disadvantage: Evidence on Alberta’s Continuing Suppression of Wages and Salaries,” published this week in collaboration with the Alberta Federation of Labour.
For a decade, wages have grown more slowly in Alberta than in any other province. And workers’ real pay (adjusted for inflation) has been going backward — fast.
The latest statistics confirm that painful trend continued in 2024. Average hourly wages (for workers paid by the hour) grew 2.2 per cent last year — third worst of any province. (Most recent available wage data covers the first 10 months of 2024.) Across Canada as a whole, hourly wages grew 3.8 per cent.
But sluggish wages didn’t protect Albertans from inflation. To the contrary, Alberta recorded the fastest inflation of any province, with annual average consumer prices rising 2.9 per cent in 2024. Slow wage growth plus faster inflation means bad news for workers. The real value of the hourly wage (adjusted for inflation) declined 0.8 per cent in 2024. That marks the fourth year in a row, and the ninth year in the last 11, that real hourly wages in Alberta went backward. In contrast, real wages in other provinces have been rebounding briskly. On average across Canada, hourly wages (adjusted for inflation) grew 1.3 per cent in 2024.
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