Some forecasts about Alberta’s unemployment rates have the official opposition concerned about the recovery of the economy.
NDP Finance Critic Shannon Phillips was on the Trending 55 Hot Seat and says the high rate of youth unemployment isn’t a good sign for the province’s future.
“This should be one of our first ways that we are making sure that we can reemerge from the pandemic. Be it good summer jobs or internships and those kinds of training focused opportunities or even just good service industry opportunities for young people so that they find a way to build a life here and stay here in Alberta.”
Phillips says there needs to be more diversification of the economy to create jobs, particularly in rural areas.
“When you have a situation where you have a service company or agricultural value add that sets up shop in some of these smaller areas, you have some of the ripple effects for accounting jobs and service jobs and so on. We need to understand that our government policies and what we set out both in terms of how we attract new investment and how we’re managing our health care and education systems, really have a huge effect.”
Phillips was this week’s Hot Seat guest from the NDP, you can hear the full conversation below.
– Kyle Moore, Trending 55 Newsroom
