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EI, EI, ow!
Alberta led the country in a key rate of growth, says a just-released survey by Statistics Canada.
But it’s not the kind of growth we want to see.
Alberta has seen the fastest growth in the nation of people receiving unemployment insurance (EI) benefits.
We’re up 16.8% from April to May of this year, says StatsCan.
The news gets even grimmer here in E-town.
In a one-year period, Edmonton has seen the number of people on EI nearly quadruple, from 4,250 in May 2008 to 16,040 this past May.
But it could be worse.
Our Cowtown cousins beat us out in the bad-news department.
Over that same timeframe, the number of people on pogy in Calgary leaped from 4,130 to 18,150.
That means Calgary and Edmonton rank No. 1 and No. 2 in the nation in the percentage of increase in EI claims compared to any other major city.
The StatsCan survey showed 778,700 people were on EI in Canada, up nearly 310,000 from just a year ago. That’s the highest number of people on the dole since 1997, say officials.