Lifelong Vancouverite Jessica Roberts-Farina is packing her bags and leaving.

Born and raised in “rain city,” the 26-year-old says she’s ditching the dour job climate and gloomy housing forecast for the wide open career plains of Alberta.

“Everything is so expensive, not just housing but it’s everything,” she says. “For me it’s just really frustrating.”

Roberts-Farina earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature and sociology from the University of B.C. in 2008. Since then she’s done freelance editing and worked month-to-month at a variety of communications jobs to make rent.

After completing an internship in May at the Tyee, a B.C.-based online magazine, she fell back on a customer communications job at a local skincare company.

Her boyfriend of five years, Anthony, was also struggling to find work after completing a master’s in public policy at Simon Fraser University in 2011.

“Even with all of his great experience and education, he just wasn’t finding any work in his field at all. And then we talked about changing approaches to job applications,” Roberts-Farina says. “If you’re not getting any bites here, apply outside of B.C.”

Anthony applied for just two government-policy jobs, both with the government of Alberta. Both led to an interview and both resulted in offers. He accepted one — an extended internship with the Energy ministry — and moved to Edmonton in May.

She joins him there Tuesday.

“I’m following him there for similar reasons, in that I’ve been struggling here for a long time and just kind of want to go somewhere that’s more affordable and there’s more opportunities,” she says.

Roberts-Farina has been sending out applications for editing and government communications positions since July, most of which are still in the assessment phase. She’s optimistic at least one will come through.

As for her native city: “I just don’t see when that tide is going to turn and it becomes affordable to live here.”

Haley Mitchell is also part of the wave of lapsed British Columbians ditching the province for riches east of the Rockies.

Raised in Trail, B.C., she moved to Fort McMurray for the summers of 2010 and 2011, each time for work.

“Definitely more job opportunities, especially for Fort McMurray,” she says. “People, if they want to go on vacation and they can’t get time off, they just quit their jobs because they can go and get a job somewhere else.”

Mitchell embodies the tension between desire and necessity, between wanting to stay in her home province and having to become a naturalized Albertan for the money.

“Honestly, I think it’s the mountains,” she says of her love for B.C. “The mountains are a big deal for me. I like to go hiking and I like to ski in the winter.”

She also says her time in Fort McMurray wasn’t all positive, citing drugs, the natural landscape and a lack of community as issues discouraging her from moving there for good. She’s now in Kamloops completing her bachelor’s degree in psychology at Thompson Rivers University.

But that doesn’t mean she won’t go back: “If I maybe went up there for five years to just earn some money,” she said, trailing off.

The lure? “Definitely would be the wages. I mean, I make less than minimum wage working here as a server, whereas I could go up for work at McDonald’s there and get paid $14 or $18 an hour. So it’s a big difference, for sure.”

creynolds@vancouversun.com