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Calgary still has the highest unemployment rate of any major Canadian city, according to numbers released Friday from Statistics Canada.

The Alberta rate improved slightly, at 7.8 per cent up from 7.9 per cent in April. Some of that increase came from Edmonton, which saw a decrease from 8.1 per cent in April to 7.9 per cent in May. Calgary saw no improvement though — the city’s unemployment rate remained at 9.3 per cent.

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“The main culprit is the fact that the oil and gas industry itself is not improving in Alberta. Many of our other industries: construction, finance, are very closely related to the oil and gas industry,” said Anupam Das, associate professor of economics at Mount Royal University.

Other cities with oil and gas as key industries are struggling. St. John’s, N.L., has the second-highest unemployment rate in the country. Things actually got worse for them in May, where the unemployment rate hit 8.5 per cent, up from 8.3 per cent in April. Saskatoon, another oil and gas hub, has the third-worst unemployment rate in the country. They hit 8.3 per cent in May, up from 7.8 per cent in April.