Nearly six in 10 Albertans worry they can’t keep up with monthly expenses as the economy grinds to a halt amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, a survey by a financial advisory firm released Monday shows.

Data collected by Ipsos for the MNP Consumer Debt Index at the beginning of March — before businesses, schools and public spaces closed to slow the spread of the coronavirus — found 58 per cent of Albertans said they were less than $200 away from insolvency, or not being able to pay their monthly bills. This is up 11 points from the last report in January, and is the highest of any province.

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Just over one-third say they’re already falling behind.

“Quite frankly, I expect these numbers to be even worse in the course of the next month or two as people are obviously taking stock of the situation,” Zaki Alam, an Edmonton licensed insolvency trustee with MNP, said Monday.

“It’s a pretty bleak projection at the moment in terms of what’s happening with the oil price and the economy … it’s like a perfect storm obviously for us in Alberta.”

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People in this province are also worried about job security and how much debt they are carrying.

About half of Albertans — 46 per cent — fear they or someone in their household could lose their jobs, 12 per cent higher than the Canadian average. Around the same number of Canadians, including Albertans, also worry about their debt.

MNP president Grant Bazian said the data shows how vulnerable Canadian households are to income disruptions.

“Over the next few months we’ll likely see an unfolding of two crises: the global pandemic and the bursting of the Canadian consumer debt bubble,” he said in a news release.

Hospitality, casual workers could be in trouble

Alam says there was already a slight increase in hospitality and casual workers filing for consumer protection in Edmonton earlier this year, and store closures could make things worse.

He says people shouldn’t panic, but just keep an eye on their finances.

“The main thing is to look after yourself, (your) health, and then work on the finances down the line once things settle down,” he says.

The quarterly, national poll measures consumers’ confidence in their ability to pay bills and manage debts.

It was compiled by Ipsos March 2-5, surveying 2,000 Canadians ages 18 and over. It is weighted to balance demographics to represent the population according to census data. The credibility interval is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points 19 times out of 20, but is wider for a subset of the population.