Edmonton is now pacing the country’s largest municipalities when it comes the jobless numbers.
Statistics Canada’s September numbers show the unemployment rate in Alberta’s capital sits at nine per cent.
That’s up from 8.6 per cent the month before and above the national average of 6.5 per cent.
Moshe Lander with Concordia University’s department of economics says it could be the number of people moving into the province that’s driving up that number.
“There’s a misconception that people move to Alberta and instantaneously start a job on Monday. That’s not the way it works,” Lander said.
“It’s not that the economy is necessarily soft, it’s not that Alberta’s weak, it’s just that people are moving faster than there are jobs to absorb them.”
Lander says the time of year could also be a factor.
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He says unemployment often rises in the summer before people return to work in the fall and winter.
“I would probably want to see whether this is just what happens in Canadian summer or this is the beginning of a worrying trend where it’s going to be persistent leading the Canadian rankings in unemployment numbers,” Lander said.
Lander adds that will take more data to determine Edmonton’s trends.
Calgary and Lethbridge are the other two Alberta cities included in Statistics Canada’s report. Calgary’s jobless rate is 7.4 per cent and Lethbridge’s is 5.1 per cent.
Windsor is the only other city with an unemployment rate more than 8 per cent at 8.9.
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