Article content continued

“That’s been a really long-standing pattern,” said Jennifer Hansen, manager of demography and statistics with the Alberta Treasury Board. “It’s the only (province) — everyone else has more females than males.”

Part of the reason is Alberta’s young population. Women in general live longer than men, and the gender gap widens after age 65. By age 100, the gap is especially stark — Alberta had 535 women 100 years or older in 2016, compared to just 115 men.

In 2016, Alberta had the smallest proportion of seniors of any Canadian province at just 12.3 per cent. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick tied for oldest with 19.9 per cent over 65, and were among the provinces that skewed most heavily female.

The other factor is Alberta’s trades-centric economy. Jobs in the trades attracted thousands of male migrants from other parts of Canada during oil-and-gas booms. International immigration plays a larger role in other provinces’ population growth and tends to bring in an equal number of men and women.

Dave Landry, an apprentice electrician at NAIT, was one of those recent migrants. He moved from Ontario for oilfield work, where “99.5” per cent of his coworkers were men. Since the downturn he’s started training to do electrical work in the city.

“I started in the oilfield, and when that went down I got into electrical,” he said.

Alberta isn’t attracting people like it once was, but so far the male majority trend has survived the downturn.

Even as the baby-boom generation reaches old age and men begin to drop off, population projections don’t foresee women outnumbering men any time between now and 2041.

Hansen said this all depends on steady rates of migration, but the trend should persist even under low economic growth scenarios.

“I don’t know that (we’re) going to see a real sharp tip into a pattern similar to the rest of the country, because we don’t have any indication Alberta would stop being attractive to migrants,” she said.

jwakefield@postmedia.com