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Statistics Canada’s monthly Labour Force Survey has become a showcase for Quebec’s minor economic miracle.

Once an economic basket case, the province is now in competition with British Columbia for the title of Canada’s most impressive regional economy.

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Among the Big Four provinces, Quebec alone recorded an increase in employment in July, StatCan reported on Aug. 9. The province’s unemployment rate in July, and for the third time in four months, was 4.9 per cent, the lowest in a database that dates to 1976. The Canadian rate was 5.7 per cent.

Quebec had never beaten the national average until September 2016, and hasn’t been above it since. The July jobless rate in B.C. was 4.4 per cent, up a bit from that province’s record low of 4.2 per cent, last touched in September and October. The numbers for Ontario and Alberta were 5.7 per cent and seven per cent, respectively. Both figures are satisfactory. The labour market in Canada’s largest provincial economy remains strong, while the situation in Alberta has stabilized after the jobless rate surged to around nine per cent from about 4.5 per cent after oil prices collapsed in 2014 and 2015.