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The Alberta government is “very concerned” by the soaring number of workers receiving jobless benefits, the province’s labour minister said Thursday after new data showed employment insurance claims have risen 74 per cent from a year ago.

Statistics Canada said the number of Alberta beneficiaries climbed for an eighth straight month in June, rising by 7.7 per cent, to 52,160. The largest increases occurred in occupations related to natural and applied sciences (13.3 per cent) and the processing, manufacturing and utilities sectors (8.5 per cent), the federal agency said.

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Labour Minister Lori Sigurdson said the NDP government is continuing work on a job creation strategy but declined to offer details about how the plan — expected this fall — will address rising unemployment linked to low oil prices.

“We’re certainly very concerned about it as a government and want to support people in this time,” Sigurdson told reporters in Calgary.

“As a new government we have to work to mitigate those issues. A lot of it has to do with what happened before we were in. We need to have a more diversified economy and we’re really moving on that, developing other industries.”

Statistics Canada said the number of Alberta recipients jumped 8.3 from May with Calgary (9.2 per cent) and Edmonton (5.7 per cent) both seeing increases. Since June 2014, the number of Calgary beneficiaries has soared 65 per cent to 16,480 people.