Economy Overview

The Economy Overview is designed to be a quick, high-level summary of a regional economy (census division, CMA, or province) to show you the major trends influencing the region. With information on top industries, jobs, demographics, and more, the report combines data from a variety of sources to produce a comprehensive picture of the forces shaping the community. 

To start the report, simply select the region of your choice and click Run. Here we are looking at the economy for the Calgary CMA. 

 

Inside the report

The report begins with a breakdown of population, employment, income, and program completions, as well as regional imports and exports for our selected region. We can see here that in 2019, Calgary had 747K jobs, and the average wage was $66K per year.

Notice that if a particular data point is not available for your specified time frame, the report provides data for the most recent year available. For example, our timeframe is 2018-2019, but the completions data below is from 2016. To see each of the above categories in more detail, click the blue plus sign. To learn more about how each category is defined, click the blue question mark. 

 

Regional Trends

The next chart shows historical job percent change in your selected region compared to any other region you specify. It also shows the projected changes you can expect. Calgary’s numbers have remained higher than Quebec’s since 2004, though the actual percent change is lower overall. Note that you can add (or remove) regions for further comparison, such as Prince Edward Island shown below. 

 

Business Location Size Distribution

This section gives insight into the distribution of businesses of varying size within Calgary’s economy. The colored bar at the top represents the number of businesses with a certain number of employees–small business locations with less than 50 employees (blue) account for about 25% of the total, while business locations with no determined number of employees (pink) account for about 70% or so. 

We can better understand this information by looking at the data listed below the bar. This table shows a more detailed breakdown of the business size distribution in Calgary over the last four years. In December 2019, there were around 56K small business locations in Calgary, 2.3K medium business locations, almost 500 large locations, and 134K indeterminate locations.  

 

 

Growing & Declining Occupations

As an economy flows and changes, supply and demand adjusts with it. This list shows the top three occupations that have grown within our timeframe, and three that have declined the most. In Calgary, over a thousand jobs for cooks were added between 2018-2019, and 875 administrative assistant jobs. On the other hand, general office support worker jobs declined by 487, and geological and mineral technologists and technicians declined by 712.

 

Growing & Declining Industries

Similar to the previous section, this list shows the top three growing industries and the top three declining industries in Calgary. Management of companies and enterprises had the highest change in jobs at 2,162, followed by elementary and secondary schools at 1,056. 

We hope this report provides the detailed labor market information you need to make good decisions and drive prosperity for your organization and community. If you have additional questions or concerns, please contact our customer service team by using the Submit a Question feature on the right side of the page. We’d love to learn more about your work and see how we can help!