Calgary Real Estate
Economy
Calgary's economy is still dominated by the oil and gas industry, despite recent diversification. The larger companies are BP, EnCana, Imperial Oil, Petro-Canada, Shell Canada, Suncor Energy, and TransCanada, making the city home to 87% of Canada's oil and natural gas producers and 66% of coal producers.
In 1996, Canadian Pacific Railway moved its head office from Montreal to Calgary, and, with 3,100 employees, is among the city's top employers. In 2005, Imperial Oil moved its headquarters from Toronto to Calgary in order to take advantage of Alberta's favorable corporate taxes and to be closer to its oil operations. This involved the relocation of approximately 400 families.
Some other large employers include Shaw Communications (7,500 employees), NOVA Chemicals (4,900 employees), TELUS (4,500 employees), Nexen (3,200 employees), CNRL (2,500 employees), Shell Canada (2,200 employees), Dow Chemical Canada (2,000 employees).
In October 2006, EnCana announced the construction of the Bow, a 59-floor skyscraper in the downtown core of the city. This new corporate headquarters for the company will become, when completed, the tallest building in Canada outside of Toronto.
As of 2005, Calgary had a labor force of 649,300 (a 76.3% participation rate). In 2006, Calgary had the lowest unemployment rate (3.2%) among major cities in Canada, and as a result, there is an extreme shortage of workers, both skilled and unskilled. It is common to see signing bonuses for workers in the service industry as well as starting wages for grade school students up to $15 per hour at local fast food eateries. Downtown hotels have had to shut down floors due to a lack of staff to clean all the rooms. Calgary's housing boom, combined with large road construction projects and competition from oil fields with high wages to the north, has created a strain on the labour force.
