OP/ED: B.C. should take note of Alberta's economic performance

The following op-ed, written by ICBA Chief Economist Jock Finlayson and consulting economist Ken Peacock, was first published in Business in Vancouver on June 16, 2026.

What can we say about the economic well-being of families and workers in British Columbia? The question takes on special importance at a time of widespread concerns over “affordability” and significant uncertainty about the economic outlook amid U.S. President Trump’s shambolic tariff barrage and the lingering war in the Middle East.

This column provides a quick scan of a few Statistics Canada data sources to shed light on the topic.

We focus on three measures of economic well-being: real economic output (or gross domestic product -- GDP) per person; average weekly earnings for individuals engaged in formal employment; and personal disposable income per person. Data is presented for B.C. along with Alberta and Canada as a whole. As it happens, Alberta leads the country on all three measures.

At almost $75,000, Alberta tops the Canadian leaderboard in per person GDP – and by a wide margin. In part, this reflects the heavy concentration of the energy sector in Alberta. High productivity industries, of which energy is a primary example, pay their employees more and generate more “value-added” per unit of labour deployed in their operations; they also foster significant positive spillovers across the wider economy – especially if, like oil and gas in Alberta, they are strongly export-oriented. Coupled with the sheer size of the oil and gas, petrochemicals, and pipeline industrial complex with the Alberta economy, this delivers a hefty boost to the value of economic output (real GDP) per resident.

British Columbia ($60,131) scores a little better than Canada ($59,529) on per person GDP, a finding that aligns with the fact that productivity here also roughly matches the national average. In British Columbia, there is no industry sector featuring very high levels of productivity that looms as large as energy does in Alberta, which contributes to B.C. lagging behind its eastern neighbor in real GDP per person.

A second factor that raises per person economic output in Alberta versus B.C. and the Canadian average is a high employment rate – that is, the share of the total population that holds a job. Here, too, Alberta stands first in the country. Its high employment rate, in turn, is related to the fact that Alberta has the youngest population of any province.

A similar pattern emerges when we examine employee pay. Alberta has the highest average weekly earnings in the country – although on this metric, the gaps with Canada and B.C. are much smaller than with real GDP per person. B.C. slightly trails Alberta and is very close to the national benchmark on average weekly earnings at $1,265 -- vs $1,306 in Alberta and $1,268 for Canada (these figures are 2025 annual averages).

Finally, consider disposable (or after-tax) income per person. This is perhaps the most common-sense gauge of individual prosperity. At $46,308 in 2024, Alberta again ranks first, approximately $4,700 above the Canadian average ($41,605) and almost $1,000 higher than in B.C. ($45,350).

On most indicators of economic prosperity, B.C. puts in a decent showing in the Canadian context. We beat the national benchmark on output per person, as well as on average after-tax income. We do marginally less well on employee earnings. When it comes to both economy-wide and individual prosperity, Alberta owns the podium, outperforming the rest of the country. This point is worth keeping in mind as Alberta gets ready to hold a provincial referendum in which voters will be asked to consider the option of leaving Canada.

For B.C. policymakers, these prosperity measures underscore the importance of establishing an overall business climate that encourages investment and company growth in sectors that pack an outsized economic punch. Determining which industries fit that description requires looking at their productivity levels, how much their employees are paid, business investment patterns, and to what extent they are involved in exporting goods and services. As our former Business Council of B.C. colleague David Williams has often emphasized, smart economic development policy should prioritize enhancing the growth prospects of the most productive sectors of our economy.