Employment anxiety among Canadians is highest in the place you might least expect it

About half of Canadians are having anxiety about their ability to change jobs or find comparable employment, but such worries are even higher in Alberta despite a strong job market, says MNP Ltd.

Nationally, 55 per cent of working people polled for MNP by Ipsos said they worried about job mobility and opportunities, much higher than Grant Bazian, president of MNP, was expecting.

“But when you have a majority over half the population, or at least a survey indicating that there was anxiety about it, to me that was a bit of an eye-opener,” he said. “I credit that to just so much uncertainty in the world right now.”

Job mobility worries were 61 per cent amongst Albertans, “the highest proportion among the provinces,” according to the survey, but such fears in Ontario were a close second at 60 per cent.

“Big picture, Albertans have experienced a lot more economic cycles than most other Canadians,” Sandra Landry, an Alberta-based licenced insolvency trustee at MNP, said, referring to the historical rise and fall of global energy prices.

“Even when people are employed, they often remember how quickly circumstances can change, so that’s where a lot of this feeling is coming from.”

Financial vulnerability appears to be the root cause for people’s fears, with 32 per cent nationally and 40 per cent in Alberta saying it would prove to be a struggle to find a new job with similar pay and benefits. There were also worries about the ability to withstand a period of lower or no income.

“When Canadians are not confident they can replace their income if their job situation changed, carrying debt can feel much more precarious,” Bazian said. “A job loss, reduction in hours or change in pay can quickly alter what a household can afford, particularly when there is not much room in the budget to absorb the change.”

More than half of those surveyed said they would not be able to support themselves or their family for six months without borrowing or falling behind on bills if they lost their job.

But if anyone can breathe a little easier about their employment prospects, it should be Albertans.

The province gained 23,000 jobs in September, reversing two straight months of losses, while Canada’s economy lost 68,000 roles, Statistics Canada said on Oct. 9. The province’s unemployment rate fell to 6.4 per cent from 6.8 per cent in August and is now lower than the national jobless rate of 6.5 per cent.

However, Albertans also have some of the highest debt-income ratios, Charles St-Arnaud, chief economist at Servus Credit Union in Edmonton, said in a note earlier this month on consumer debt.

“This makes Albertans particularly vulnerable to job losses,” he said.

Their “purchasing power” has also eroded due to weaker pay and wage increases, which grew one per cent year over year, much lower than the rest of the country, he said in a separate note.

Landry said Albertans have been on the alert for the past year.

“(Albertans) just become less willing to take any of those career risks and become a lot more concerned about protecting that existing income,” she said.

Aside from debt fears, about four in 10 Canadians said they worried artificial intelligence could harm their employment and income and that fear was highest in the Atlantic provinces at 47 per cent.

About a quarter of working respondents said trade and tariff wars also posed a threat, and that fear was highest in Saskatchewan and Manitoba at 32 per cent.

Bazian said artificial intelligence registered as a higher concern because it is a permanent change, unlike tariffs.

“There’s the (U.S.) midterm elections coming up. They know that the president is not going to be there for another term. So, this is a temporary thing,” he said. “Most people feel that it’s eventually going to settle, so they’re not as anxious. But AI, that’s kind of here to stay.”