Red Deer region’s unemployment rate improved slightly in August, but remains higher than a year ago.
Unemployment was at 7.3 per cent in this region last month, down slightly from 7.4 per cent a month earlier. In August 2018, unemployment was at 6.7 per cent, says Statistics Canada’s Alberta Labour Force Statistics.
Provincially, the unemployment rate climbed to 7.2 per cent in August, up from seven per cent in July. That’s higher than the national unemployment rate of 5.7 per cent, which remained unchanged from July.
A year ago, Alberta’s unemployment rate was 6.7 per cent and the nation’s was six per cent.
Edmonton had the highest unemployment rate — 7.8 per cent — of the province’s seven economic regions.
Banff-Jasper-Rocky Mountain House-Grande Prairie-Peace River had the lowest at 5.4 per cent. The others are: Calgary (7.4), Lethbridge-Medicine Hat (7.1), Wood Buffalo-Cold Lake (6.3) and Camrose-Drumheller (5.6).
There were 2.344 million people employed in Alberta last month, up 3,500 from a month earlier, and 182,600 unemployed, up 6,000 from July.
Across Canada, Quebec had the lowest unemployment rate at 4.7 per cent, and Newfoundland the highest at 13.1 per cent.
The others are: B.C. (5.0), Saskatchewan (5.1), Manitoba (5.6), Ontario (5.6), Nova Scotia (7.9), New Brunswick (8.6) and Prince Edward Island (8.9).