Brings back wonderful images of Calgary in the 80s.
When Lees, 28, moved to the city three years ago from Winnipeg, she couldn’t walk down the street without seeing a "Help Wanted" sign in every retail window.
Employers were offering trips to new recruits and giving away cars as incentives to employees.
After months of looking for everything from secretarial work to part-time retail positions, Lees said she is painfully aware of a new reality.
"There aren’t even jobs out there to stock shelves or bag groceries," she said.
No province is immune to declining fortunes, but Alberta’s fall, after such dramatic highs as last summer’s oil and gas prices, is steeper than anywhere else.
The province’s economic activity is projected to fall by 2.3 per cent this year, the sharpest drop among the provinces, according to an RBC report. Capital investments in the province have scaled back significantly, most noticeably in drilling for new wells.
How is it here in Saskatchewan?
Others, who have seen the highs and lows, are opting out of the economy altogether. Catherine O’Rourke, who moved to Calgary in 1998 before the big economic boom, left a few months ago for Regina, where the Saskatchewan economy is still on the rise.
Her condo, bought when prices were high in 2006, has dropped in value over the last year, but O’Rourke, 30, made money when she sold another condo a year earlier when the market skyrocketed. She’s now selling, or hoping to swap it for a house in Regina, after getting a secure job in Saskatchewan as a legal assistant.
It’s weird. For so long in Saskatchewan, you went to the University of Saskatchewan and then kissed your parents goodbye and said thanks for the pizza money and then you moved to Calgary. To repay your province back, you bought a new Rider jersey every year and went to McMahon Stadium when Saskatchewan came to town and cheered for the visiting team. That’s the way the universe worked until last year.
I remember reading somewhere that the reason Ralph Klein didn’t want to spend was that he felt that the boom is Alberta was partly artificial and related to the boom in Fort McMurray. Maybe he was right
[...] rest is here: The Recession Hits Calgary Social [...]