Everything is more expensive and the world's economy remains in shaky ground but workers in Alberta can rest knowing their paycheques have grown more than those of all other Canadians and are now the biggest in the country.
Numbers released this week by Statistics Canada for the the month of February show that while the average weekly earnings of non-farm payroll Canadian employees was $909, a 3.1 per cent increase year-over-year, the average Alberta worker earned $1,100 a week. That is a 4.5 per cent increase year-over-year.
The second biggest paycheques in the country are found in the other side of Canada, where in Newfoundland, workers earned an average weekly paycheque totaling $946.
But those same Statistics Canada numbers indicate Newfoundland is about to be overtaken by that former economic wall flower Saskatchewan, which saw average weekly paycheques come in at $941.
But the prairie province also saw the biggest increase, after Alberta, in average weekly pay, at 3.8 per cent year over year.
By comparison, Newfoundland's weekly wages grew by 3.7. All three provinces were well above the national average for weekly earnings, as well as for wage growth year-over-year.
Click through the gallery below for a breakdown of what the average weekly wage is in each province.
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Average Weekly Earnings
The same factor may be pushing growth on all three provinces, as the industry driving the economic engines - to a significant degree - in all three also saw the highest increase of payroll employment, according to StatsCanada figures.
On a year-over-year basis, payroll employment rose nationally by 244,500, or 1.6 percent, stated StatsCan, adding that, "among all sectors, mining, quarrying and oil and gas extraction posted the highest 12-month growth rate in payroll employment," at 7.1 per cent.