[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

It might be more useful to post or look at the actual profile of employees per capita because just looking at the values 10.29% and 10.23% forty years apart leaves out a lot of details. It looks like the number when the NDP gained power was around 9% and increased to 10 3% over a couple of years.

from the same article

It is widely known that nominal weekly earnings in Alberta are the highest in the country, and since at least 2001, the consumer price index (CPI) has also advanced more in Alberta than in any of its comparator jurisdictions. As such, it is important that any earnings comparisons between Alberta and other jurisdictions consider these different inflation rates.

Since 2001, average overall earnings for all workers in Alberta have exceeded those in each of the comparator jurisdictions except Ontario, where Alberta earnings surpassed those in that province in 2008. In 2014, average earnings in Alberta were some 15 percent higher than the national and Ontario average, and 25 percent higher than in Quebec. The downturn in the provincial economy has meant that the Alberta wage advantage has declined to 8 percent compared to the national average, but in 2018 relative real earnings were still higher than in all other jurisdictions.

Disaggregating the three industries largely (or exclusively in the case of public administration) populated by public employees—educational services, health care and social assistance, and public administration, which collectively employ 85.5 percent of all public employees in Canada and 87.1 percent in Alberta—allows a comparison of public sector wage levels to all Alberta workers. The data show that while overall real weekly earnings in Alberta are above those in Canada and its three largest provinces, real weekly earnings in Alberta for each of the three public sector industries under consideration are often at or below those of other jurisdictions.

It’s possible to get a better understanding of relative earnings levels by using a difference-in-difference methodology, which compares the relative earnings differences in each of the three main public sector industries with the overall earnings differential. Using this measure, we find that relative to overall wages, Alberta employees in these industries tend to suffer a wage penalty, although this penalty has diminished since the mid-2010s, coinciding with the recent downturn in the Alberta economy and the commensurate decline in overall real weekly earnings. Employees in these three industries in Alberta do have earnings that tend to be higher than in other sectors, but earnings in Alberta in these other sectors tend to be proportionately higher than in the other provinces, putting Albertans in these public sector jobs at a relative earnings disadvantage (the exception is local government administration employees).

A final way to look at public sector compensation levels is to compare real hourly wage levels using the nominal LFS wage data adjusted for differences in the rate of inflation by jurisdiction. The data show that overall real wages in Alberta are higher than the Canadian average (and higher than in any of the provinces), and this overall wage advantage is largely due to higher private sector wages, where the Alberta advantage is 17–18 percent for private sector employees in Alberta relative to the national average, compared to the public sector wage advantage of 9–10 percent.