Alberta's latest labour market report shows migration numbers on the decline, though the province is still among the leaders in growth. The report also shows job numbers on the upswing while unemployment remains high.--NEWS FILE PHOTO
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Data from the province shows migration of all kinds declined in 2025.
New labour force statistics included a snapshot of migration to and from the province as the premier prepares to put questions about immigration to referendum this fall.
Albertans departing for other provinces overwhelmingly left for British Columbia, where 18,577 Albertans relocated in 2025, or to Ontario, with 13,357.
Those provinces were also the primary sources of migration to Alberta, with 21,790 Ontarians migrating to the province and 21,427 British Columbians.
Interprovincial migration has dropped substantially over the last two years, from more than 40,000 net additions in 2023 to fewer than 20,000 as of the third quarter in 2025.
International migration has also taken a notable drop, falling by nearly half year over year as of Q3 2025. More than 60,000 immigrants arrived in Alberta in 2024, whereas fewer than 40,000 had migrated to the province as of the end of Q3.
Net non-permanent residents dropped over the first three quarters of last year by more than 15,000 people.
More than half of all immigrants coming to Alberta in that period moved to Calgary. Calgary and Edmonton together accounted for just over 87 per cent of immigration.
Outside the major cities, the Lethbridge-Medicine Hat region absorbed the most immigrants, with 1,964 newcomers – 3.4 per cent of the year’s immigrants – settling in the area.
Net migration to Alberta outweighed departures from Alberta for every province except Nunavut. The margin was widest for Ontario, where more than 8,000 departed for Alberta than left it.
The report also included year-over-year data about employment in the province, which showed robust employment growth in Alberta but a climbing unemployment rate.
Employment growth in Alberta led the country in 2025, with the province adding more than 71,000 jobs year over year, representing a change of 2.8 per cent.
The Prairie provinces comprised the top three for employment growth, each trending above the national employment growth rate of 1.4 per cent.
Employment has increased steadily since 2021, but the rate of growth has been slowing, falling from 5.1 per cent in 2021 to 2.8 last year.
Alberta and Saskatchewan tied for the highest employment rate among the provinces at 63.9 per cent.
Still, unemployment trended at an average of 7.2 per cent, higher than the Canadian average of 6.8 per cent and fourth-highest among Canadian provinces.
The unemployment rate has been slowly rising in Alberta in each of the last four years after a spike in 2020 related to the pandemic. Roughly 200,900 Albertans were unemployed in 2025, the first time the number has surpassed 200,000 since 2021.
Lethbridge-Medicine Hat posted the highest unemployment rate outside the two major cities in 2025 at seven per cent.
The highest unemployment rates in the province were reported in the natural resources and agriculture sector, outside of management, where 8.4 per cent of workers reported unemployment.
The lowest rate was in the health sector, with less than one per cent of workers reporting unemployment.
The province’s 10-year population growth rate in 2025 of 21.2 per cent remained higher than the national average of 16.7 per cent.
Unemployment remained higher for Indigenous people living off-reserve in all Canadian jurisdictions in 2025. In Alberta, 11 per cent of Indigenous peoples off-reserve were unemployed, 3.7 per cent more than the provincial average.
Indigenous people living off-reserve make up 4.0 per cent of the working population in Lethbridge-Medicine Hat.
Alberta’s median age was also the second-lowest at 38.1 years, behind only Manitoba, where the median resident is 37.6 years old.
