A report out from ATB'S Economics and Research team on August 4th showed that July was the worst month in 2017 for jobs in Alberta.

According to the report, Alberta lost 14,400 jobs last month. Even so, Kent Rupert with Airdrie Economic Development says we've seen an increase in jobs this year.

"From January to June, we've seen 48 new businesses come in and just over 200 home-based entrepreneurs and between full-time and part-time jobs we've brought in about 279 new positions within the community."

Rupert said if you look back a number of years, the city has actually seen consistent economic growth, largely tied to residential growth.

"We're doing pretty good actually. Airdrie always sort of continues to carry on and as we see our residential growth goes up, we see our business growth increase as well. Over the last ten years we averaged about 8 percent growth on new businesses."

The report from ATB showed that Calgary gained 4,100 new jobs while Edmonton lost the same amount of jobs last month. Both cities now sit at 8.5 percent joblessness. Rupert explained that Airdrie is closely tied to our neighbour to the south.

"When we look at employment, yes we've added 279 new positions whether full-time or part-time, but we have a lot of individuals that still work in downtown Calgary and are still affected by the Calgary market."

 

Questions, comments or story ideas? Email us at news@discoverairdrie.com