Construction workers work on the balcony of an under construction multi-storey building in the University area on in April. Alberta leads the country in housing starts this year. Photo by Greg Southam /Postmedia

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At seven per cent, Alberta’s unemployment rate is higher than the national average of 6.5 per cent. It’s higher than every other province except New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador.

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Periodically, people from the left gloat about this as if to say, “See, see, Alberta’s not as strong as you think.”

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But these are only the headline numbers.

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Alberta, with just 12 per cent of the national population, has created 90,700 new jobs so far this year. That’s 93 per cent of the national total — 93 per cent!

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Over the past 12 months, Alberta has accounted for 79% of new jobs created in Canada — four in five, according to ATB Financial.

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By comparison, Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, created about 11 per cent of new jobs. Manitoba and Saskatchewan produced about six per cent combined.

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Nearly every other province produced a tiny fraction or, like Quebec and B.C., lost jobs.

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The reasons for Alberta’s higher unemployment rate are twofold: Despite what a massive job creation machine Alberta is, other Canadians and new Canadians are moving here so fast and in such large numbers looking for economic opportunity that our job generator cannot keep up. (Almost, but not quite.)

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Alberta also has, by far, the highest labour-market participation rate in the country.

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Why does that matter? Because the participation rate is the percentage of the working-age population that is either employed or actively looking for work. If a province has way more job-seekers than jobs, it’s unemployment rate will be higher — higher than Alberta’s.

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Alberta’s participation rate in June was 70.2 per cent. British Columbia’s, for instance, was 65.7 per cent, and B.C. is losing population. In the past year it has lost nearly 52,000 residents, many to neighbouring Alberta.

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If the remaining British Columbians were working in similar numbers to Alberta, B.C.’s participation rate would be closer to ours.

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Only P.E.I. and Saskatchewan have nearly as great a percentage of their populations (69.3 per cent and 68.1 per cent, respectively) employed.

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The national rate is 66.3 per cent, the same as Ontario’s, while Quebec’s is 65.5 per cent.

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As has been the case for nearly three decades, Albertans are the hardest-working people in the country.

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There’s a similar story with housing starts.

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Last week the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation revealed that new housing starts in Canada (including apartments and condos) could be off as much as three per cent in 2026, after falling a similar amount in 2025. And 2027 looks no better.