low hiring forecast for the Prairies<\/a> projected by a recent Bank of Canada survey, could mean the upward swing might not be a lasting one, he said.<\/p>\n\u201cWe should be cautious and not get overly excited with the recent increase,\u201d St-Arnaud said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019ll see job losses, but we should see more of a return to more modest employment gains in the coming months.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In his statement, Schow said the province remains optimistic job growth will continue in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Youth unemployment down<\/p>\n
November also saw the national youth unemployment rate drop for the second month in a row to 12.8 per cent, down from 14.7 per cent in September \u2014 the highest it had been since 2010, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Edmonton-based career coach Kristen Carter said while the numbers are encouraging, the decrease could be due to seasonal demands, and more part-time opportunities.<\/p>\n
She said it still may be too early to see changes in the market from the province\u2019s new Alberta Youth Employment Incentive. The program, comprised of $8 million in grants for employers to hire Albertans between 15 and 24, was announced in September.\u00a0<\/p>\n
John Mackell, the owner of an Edmonton flower shop called Laurel\u2019s on Whyte, said he is currently looking for part-time employees in anticipation of the busiest times of year for his shop: Christmas, Valentine\u2019s Day and Mother\u2019s Day.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can go from famine, drought, to overabundance in business,\u201d he told CBC News. \u201cIt\u2019s easier to hire part-timers just because it\u2019s easier to up their hours during that time \u2014 during the busier times \u2014 and then when it gets quiet again I can lower the amount of hours.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mackell said younger, less experienced applicants generally prefer part-time work to get a sense of the job before diving into a career, or to accommodate other part-time employment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still \u2018an employer\u2019s market\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite the drop in the unemployment rate, some businesses looking to hire say they are still spoiled for choice.\u00a0<\/p>\n
David Jannard, the head of retail for Blush Lane Markets Alberta, said online job postings for the company\u2019s stores typically stay up for a week. But recently, they\u2019ve garnered as many as 200 applications in 24 hours.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely an employer\u2019s market and has been for some time,\u201d he told CBC News. \u201cWe\u2019ve been very successful in finding candidates because the pool is so large.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c[Postings] rarely last two days.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mackell said he\u2019s currently fishing from a dwindling number of applicants, but he believes the overall jump in employment in the province is a good omen for his bottom line.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s perhaps a little bit of a trickle effect. There might be more business coming into the store, more business coming into our studio, doing our workshops and that kind of thing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,184,85,46],"class_list":["post-170772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Text](\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/a\/assets\/texttospeech.svg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1764997208_453_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1764997208_546_default.jpg\")
Servus Credit Union chief economist Charles St-Arnaud speaks to CBC News in December 2025 for an interview conducted via video call. (Screenshot from CBC News interview conducted via Google Meet)<\/p>\n