Calgary & Alberta Economy

[darwink]

Austin, Denver, and Nashville

So, important to see why things are succeeding there before assuming they will succeed here in the same way. One of the core factors is education creating local work forces. We've assumed that we can just absorb people from elsewhere to fill our skills gap, and it has left us entirely behind in education.\ if we're to compete in a world where we aren't offering salaries that are markedly higher than competitors to induce moving.

Lets look at those peer competitors you identified.

How many people are enrolled in PSE in the Nashville Region pop 1.96 million? 124,000
Austin urban population 1.36 million? 130,144.
Denver 2.9 million out of 5.6 million statewide? Statewide: 281,729 (Colorado is a little different since Denver is Colorado's sole magnet city, while Austin and Nashville are not.)

Calgary, population around 1.5 million? 60,000.

Heck lets add in Pittsburgh. 2.3 million, PSE enrollment: 143,000.

We lag each and every one.

 

[ByeByeBaby]

Agreed. There needs to be a balance of cost savings and quality of life. Places like Austin ans Nashville are lower cost, but are also attractive destinations. Calgary as a city has some good things going for it...Well connected international airport, well developed and improving parks and pathways, solid restaurant scene, strong ethnic diversity, and skilled labor pool, a high percentage of population with post secondary education., etc..

Calgary also has one very significant advantage over a lot of other Canadian cities: The Rocky Mountains. I've known people who have moved to Calgary over the years, just for that very reason. If we can just keep improving on the other things we can control, we'll be in a decent position.

Exactly, the race to the bottom mentality makes no sense; there will always be another location with cheaper taxes or better subsidies; if not in Canada, then in the US, if not in the US then in some other part of the world. And honestly, politicians with this mentality to me shows an underlying disrespect of Calgary and Alberta; like we are generic toilet paper that can only sell if it's two cents a roll less than the competitor, instead of places worth investing in because of our cultural capital (even the cowboy shit is cultural capital), our diversity, our educated population, our environment, our quality of life.

An organization I worked with a while ago recruited two senior staff; one was from Ottawa, he came out for an interview only half seriously, then called his wife from the chairlift at Sunshine and told her to start packing her bags. The other was from Portland and was an avid fly fisherman; there are not many places you can stop on the way home from work at a world-class trout stream.

 

[Cowtown]

I couldn't agree more with all of the comments. For Calgary to attract or retain businesses and people, it has to be a combination of factors. If low cost was the only factor everyone would be in Arkansas or Winnipeg, and if quality of life was the only factor places like Canmore or Kelowna would be triple the size. You need all of the factors mentioned in the past few posts.

I'm bullish on Calgary for a few reasons. We have things going for us already and any areas we need to improve on, are things that are doable - ie Darwink's concern of increasing homegrown education, or building better transit, yadda yadda.. Having the Rockies and Kananaskis as a playground is something that gives a natural advantage. When you combine the outdoor lifestyle advantage with Calgary's other advantages, I think it gives Calgary the edge over any city between Toronto and Vancouver. Toronto and Vancouver have their strengths, but they aren't the be all end all either, which gives Calgary room to compete, even with those cities.

 

[CBBarnett]

I couldn't agree more with all of the comments. For Calgary to attract or retain businesses and people, it has to be a combination of factors. If low cost was the only factor everyone would be in Arkansas or Winnipeg, and if quality of life was the only factor places like Canmore or Kelowna would be triple the size. You need all of the factors mentioned in the past few posts.

I'm bullish on Calgary for a few reasons. We have things going for us already and any areas we need to improve on, are things that are doable - ie Darwink's concern of increasing homegrown education, or building better transit, yadda yadda.. Having the Rockies and Kananaskis as a playground is something that gives a natural advantage. When you combine the outdoor lifestyle advantage with Calgary's other advantages, I think it gives Calgary the edge over any city between Toronto and Vancouver. Toronto and Vancouver have their strengths, but they aren't the be all end all either, which gives Calgary room to compete, even with those cities.

I agree with most comments in the last page or two. I think it's useful in this conversation to consider our place in the hierarchy of cities in Canada so we can understand a bit of why we lose people to the cities ahead of us and - equally important - whether we can actually do anything about it. Some things we don't really have a choice about, some we do. IMO the most obvious "gaps" between us and Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver:

1. Young adults and post-secondary students

• Boom or bust we have never been competitive for young people. Our enrollment and demographics have proven this out for over 25 years.
• Our culture and collective discourse in local politics, economics and culture rarely registers this population, instead lumping it into "Calgary's a young city" rhetoric that ignores we are among the best performing in the 30-year-olds category but long the worst performer in the 18 - 25 year old categories.
• Young adults and students have specific needs that don't get addressed because we ignore them:
  • lower incomes and price sensitive (transit, renters, less car-ownership) but we offer mostly high-cost of living (with exception of rent) and car-oriented drab landscapes
  • Coolness and experience focused
  • more likely to support the "night economy" of bars, restaurants, theatres, festivals and venues
  • a key group to generating much urban culture and action as they play a big role as both consumers and employees of much of the urban lifestyle
• What we can do about it to compete better:
  • Expand post secondary population in size, quality and influence as much as possible
  • Expand urban offerings of housing, night and weekend transit, better intercity and mountain transit options, cool neighbourhoods, theatres and music venues
  • Keep improving parks and amenities to support young adult / student culture and meet them where they are at (more basketball courts, less suburban ball diamonds etc.)

2. Urban "big-city" lifestyle enthusiasts

• Not disconnected to the young adult argument, but perhaps a bit more blunt: people who want bigger cities and their benefits leave here move to them, often even if it costs way more money to do so
• All three offer numerous lifestyle and employment advantages because they are bigger and support a greater diversity of interests and industries
• Being a big city is our advantage over other cities smaller than us in the hierarchy as well. It's not a surprise that Calgary and Edmonton absorb much of the prairie province's growth as every city smaller feeds us people looking for opportunities or for interest
• What we can do about it to compete better:
  • Get bigger, but also get more diverse in our urbanism - the key reason big cities attract more is because they offer more and different options. Being big but a mono-culture (all suburbs or all towers etc.) isn't going to work
  • In Calgary's case, it's the urban lifestyle part of the equation that needs to improve: vibrancy, pedestrians, urban-centric culture (i.e. as opposed to suburban or mountain-centric culture that is already competitive, dominant and doesn't need any further help beyond a train to the mountains)

3. Industry-specific clusters we don't have

• Probably the issue that receives the most attention due to our obsession with O&G and it's "replacement" which is already the wrong way to think about it
• Every city bigger than us supports multiple clusters and doesn't get pigeon-holed into one thing in either reality or perception
• What we can do about it to compete better:
  • Change the channel overtime - less it's a conservative oil city, more its a big city with a bunch of stuff including an oil industry and conservatives
  • Upgrade our institutions and infrastructure to support increased diversity of industries and cultures

You'll notice that dependencies are tricky here (e.g. do big cities become diverse because they are big? or do diverse cities become bigger because they are diverse? etc.) as it's not a simple relationship. But to boil it down to the key things we can do:

• Get bigger and offer more lifestyle options - pretty much what this whole site mentions constantly. Urban culture and lifestyle is still the most lacking relative to the big 3 cities, but the moves are happening and population growth overall will help push us there. Needs time and no counter-productive mistakes (e.g. anti-urban policies, huge car-oriented suburban infrastructure commitments etc.) to get there.
• Get "bigger" without growing - this is all about the connectivity, you can "fake" being a big city with a nightlife if you connect and curate unique experiences. Banff is a good example - people think it's all about the outdoors, but it's urban nightlife and restaurant scene is stellar as a by-product of leveraging the primary attractor into the secondary ones. The town acts like a little city thanks to huge tourist numbers, making the right investments in urban infrastructure (street closures, design, sidewalks) and good connectivity to Calgary's airport. Build a train and make that first stop of vacations in downtown Calgary. Similarly add a good rail connections to Edmonton so the cities start to evolve together acting increasingly as one big urban economy rather than two small ones.
• Support students and young adult culture - so many ways we have failed this group to our loss as a city. We need to find ways to incorporate this demographic physically, economically and culturally into our city better.

 

[smart_development]

Actually think the cost-of-living advantage applies even more in Canada than the US because of how few options there are.

All the growth happens in concentrated areas in Canada which leads to crazy cost-of-living despite how big of a country we are. Toronto and Vancouver are making the their entire regions quite expensive.

So if you are an english speaking Canadian that is getting sick of the housing costs in Southern Ontario and BC then Calgary is probably top on the list of options.

 

[gsunnyg]

https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/c...of-young-people-a-major-challenge-for-alberta damn speaking of young adults...

 

[CBBarnett]

https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/c...of-young-people-a-major-challenge-for-alberta damn speaking of young adults...

These articles bother me because they make false connections that are commonly used politically in this City without scratching what might be actually going on. My previous recommendations are responding to what I think is actually happening.

Missing in the Herald's opinion pages is that the 20 to 24 year old population is largely stagnant since 2006 in Calgary and Edmonton. Two boom periods, and two busts have barely shifted the dial in any direction so it's important we look past the headline. My take-aways:

• Edmonton has long out-performed us for the 20 - 24 year old population, despite having a slightly smaller overall population
• Edmonton has less absolute year-to-year volatility compared to Calgary

The answer here is pretty obvious I think - Edmonton's much larger and more developed post-secondary system. Attracts more young adults from elsewhere and offers a economically-resilient base for this age group that doesn't change much.

Next up, the proportion of young adults. This is where the change is more visible. I threw in the CMA average to get a sense of us v. the rest of the cities. Remember, Canada overall is aging and the proportion of young adults has been decreasing slowly for decades. This data only looks at the CMAs, which have a far slower decline in young adults.

My takeaways:

• Both Calgary and Edmonton seem to be experiencing a similar in magnitude decline
• One interpretation could be that the younger adults chose to stay in the cities from pre-2006, pumping up older demographics and creating the relative decline. Similarly, Calgary and Edmonton have done a far better job at attracting 25 to 34 year olds that most cities, so the huge growth in these brackets reduces the relative proportion of youth

Who is doing well at growing their 20 to 24 year old population and proportion?

• Toronto CMA alone accounts for 40.3% of all CMA growth in 20 to 24 year olds (153,000 more 20 to 24 year olds live in Toronto in 2020 than in 2001)
• Vancouver CMA is 2nd with 13.8% of all CMA growth in 20 to 24 year olds (52,800 more 20 to 24 year olds live in Vancouver in 2020 than in 2001)
• The 10 biggest CMAs soaked up 91% of all 20 to 24 year old growth between 2001 and 2020
• Most surprising to me was Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge (+17,500 over 2001 to 2020), likely the fastest young adult growth as a proportion of the CMA population
  • My guess university capacity boom, growing tech hub and within the GTA's growing sphere of influence helps here
• many other mid-sized Ontario university cities holding up or seeing fairly stable growth in young adults

Toronto and Vancouver suck up so much of the youth growth, I checked to see what would happen if I excluding Toronto and Vancouver:

So what's the point of all this?

• It's not at all clear that Calgary's young population is related to the health of the Oil & Gas industry, the vacancy of downtown office buildings or any of the other claims in the original article
• Calgary's young adult gap really started in 2006, but it wasn't alone as outside of Toronto and Vancouver - many cities started seeing their young adult population decline around then as every city is rapidly aging (Calgary faster than others due to being so young at the beginning of the data)
• Vancouver and Toronto are really starting to pull away from everyone else - from 2010 to 2020 they absorbed 62%(!) of all 20 to 24 year old growth in the CMAs with Montreal taking 3rd spot at 7.6% over the period. Put another way:
  • From 2000 to 2010, The Big 3 Cities accounted for 48.7% of all 20 to 24 year old CMA growth
  • From 2010 to 2020, The Big 3 Cities accounted for 69.7% of all 20 to 24 year old CMA growth
• Perhaps we should start looking at what the Big 3 Cities are doing to grow their share + what the small cities that aren't declining are doing to not decline (universities)
• Most importantly: any solutions to this gap should have to at least make a half-hearted attempt to understand the actual problem. This province is all full up on lazy opinion pieces.

 

[Surrealplaces]

I haven't had a chance to look through all of the CMA stats for all the cities over the past 15 or so years, but I believe Toronto and Vancouver are also having a hard time retaining a lot of the young people they gain. If you take away international immigration growth and the growth of population in the 20-24 age group, I believe it would show those two CMAs would actually be losing population. A lot of the people who move to Calgary are often in older age groups, and it's possible the tend we've seen is partly that young people like to hit the big city, but when it comes time to settle down and have families etc some of those move back. That would also support the notion that it isn't clearly all about a downturned economy and empty office buildings.
It could also be tied to rise of the internet, social media and general shifts in social behavior. When I was in the 20-24 year age group it never occurred to me or my friends to make a move to Vancouver or Toronto. It wasn't all about jobs or economy, as some of my friends were unemployed at times and struggling. These days you can gather a lot of information, find jobs, apartments and friends ahead of time before even moving to another city. It also makes it easy for people to move back at a later date.

I think in the past we had such booming growth that we dampened that trend, while other cities were already seeing it.

Either way, we still need to be concerned about young people leaving, even if some come back, or we continue to attract older age groups not originally from Calgary.

 

[heightjunkie]

Part of the problem is almost certainly political. Anecdotally I know many young people who have decided to leave the province entirely because they either: a) don't believe in an economic future for Oil, or b) are embarrassed by our provincial predilection towards socially conservative policies and especially the bloviating of the current government.

 

[zagox]

Part of the problem is almost certainly political. Anecdotally I know many young people who have decided to leave the province entirely because they either: a) don't believe in an economic future for Oil, or b) are embarrassed by our provincial predilection towards socially conservative policies and especially the bloviating of the current government.

I don't see any difference in @CBBarnett's data during the NDP government's tenure. Maybe if you squint you could say that the rate of decline in 20-24 year old population slowed a bit in Calgary. No change in Edmonton.

I think a lot of people post-hoc rationalize decisions they make to tie them to some larger trend. If you are politically liberal it sounds cool to say you left Alberta to flee the Kenney government, but I have my doubts if that is real. I moved to Canada from the US and I might tell someone at a party that I was avoiding Trump, except I moved in 2014!

 

[heightjunkie]

I don't see any difference in @CBBarnett's data during the NDP government's tenure. Maybe if you squint you could say that the rate of decline in 20-24 year old population slowed a bit in Calgary. No change in Edmonton.

I think a lot of people post-hoc rationalize decisions they make to tie them to some larger trend. If you are politically liberal it sounds cool to say you left Alberta to flee the Kenney government, but I have my doubts if that is real. I moved to Canada from the US and I might tell someone at a party that I was avoiding Trump, except I moved in 2014!

Your point is valid, but I don't think that 4 years of NDP governance was enough to change the prevailing view that Alberta is a perennially conservative province that saw itself to an economic future beyond Oil and Gas.

 

[gsunnyg]

Part of the problem is almost certainly political. Anecdotally I know many young people who have decided to leave the province entirely because they either: a) don't believe in an economic future for Oil, or b) are embarrassed by our provincial predilection towards socially conservative policies and especially the bloviating of the current government.

A.)is for sure a reasonable reason for the exodus

Not sure about B.)? I can see a minority of young adults leaving due to the political atmosphere but that's not something young adults really consider that much, I mean they hardly take out the time to go out and vote.

I think B) would be a lack of entertainment and culture in the two Albertan cities compared to the Big 3, something that was also highlighted in a survey by the City of Calgary a couple of years ago. Young folks want to live in a vibrant more energetic city that matches their energy. A lot of my friends left for that experience. The campus life sucks too at both of the Albertan universities relative to UBC, UofT, McGill, Western, and Waterloo.

I can most definitely agree that one of the most important steps we need to take to get out of this economic slump is to invest in our post-secondary schools and make them competitive with other schools. Increase capital investment into research and development, increase the capacity for more students, improve campus life to increase attractiveness, and more investing into programs that are going to lead to more jobs in the new economy.

 

[Disraeli]

The one thing I don't think has been mentioned is that Toronto and Montreal has a big advantage of being able to draw from its large provincial population base. The majority of undergrads tend to remain in province and for programs like law, it is the vast majority of students.

The campus life sucks too at both of the Albertan universities relative to UBC, UofT, McGill, Western, and Waterloo.

I'm going to assume you have not attended all seven of those schools so perhaps it's best to leave out presumptions about different school's campus life

 

[ByeByeBaby]

Next up, the proportion of young adults. This is where the change is more visible. I threw in the CMA average to get a sense of us v. the rest of the cities. Remember, Canada overall is aging and the proportion of young adults has been decreasing slowly for decades. This data only looks at the CMAs, which have a far slower decline in young adults.

My takeaways:

• Both Calgary and Edmonton seem to be experiencing a similar in magnitude decline
• One interpretation could be that the younger adults chose to stay in the cities from pre-2006, pumping up older demographics and creating the relative decline. Similarly, Calgary and Edmonton have done a far better job at attracting 25 to 34 year olds that most cities, so the huge growth in these brackets reduces the relative proportion of youth

View attachment 296463

I don't think I agree with your analysis of these statistics; the share of 20 to 24 year olds over time isn't all that meaningful. How many of those 20 to 24 year olds that came here in 2005 are still here on that chart? We retained zero. Not a one. Neither did Edmonton, nor Toronto, nor Winnipeg.

Because none of those 20 to 24 year olds that were on the rise in 2005 are 20 to 24 year olds now; they're 35 to 39 year olds in today's measures. What's worse, probably a lot of those 20 to 24 year olds had kids here, which reduces the share of 20 to 24 year olds in the CMA (it also makes them more likely to stay here).

Here's the net change by age group in the Calgary CMA by five year intervals (except the last one, which is only four years).

By far the most dominating trend is a little something called the baby boom, and the subsequent echo boom - which 20 to 24 year olds were part of in the first few years of the 21st century.

Why was Calgary different from other CMAs in the trend of 20-24 year olds then? Because of the oil boom -- the one of the early 1980s, which also brought lots of people in their 20s and early 30s to town, who then had kids; the 20 to 24 year old population in 2005 were kids born 1981-1985.

Tracking by age groups is a lot different than tracking the number of university-educated residents, or the number of STEM workers, or the number of high-income workers, or the number of immigrants; these groups are relatively stable, where age groups have a 20% turnover every year even if everybody stays in the same place.

That doesn't mean that it wouldn't be good to attract young people; it's just hard to consider the share of young people to be important, and it's hard to measure attracting young people versus other demographic shifts.

 

[gsunnyg]

The one thing I don't think has been mentioned is that Toronto and Montreal has a big advantage of being able to draw from its large provincial population base. The majority of undergrads tend to remain in province and for programs like law, it is the vast majority of students.


I'm going to assume you have not attended all seven of those schools so perhaps it's best to leave out presumptions about different school's campus life

I've been to two of them as a general visit and from at least what I hear from buddies, the campus life is much more bumping at other schools. Their campuses are like mini-towns. UofC is largely a commuter campus like SFU and UofA isn't nearly at the level of UBC. I don't mean to be rude, but I'm sorry, campus life sucks in Alberta.