A message from Siddhartha Bhattacharya at ATB Economics:
Calgary's population soared by more than 100,000 in 2024, the fastest among all 41 census metropolitan areas in Canada, to reach almost 1.8 million last year. This comes after a 5.8% increase in 2023. In fact, nearly half of Alberta's annual provincial increase (over 204,000) occurred in Calgary last year. Relative to five years ago, the number of Calgarians jumped by 18.3% in 2024 vs 2019 levels.
It was a fairly similar story for Edmonton as the city's population rose by almost 73,000 (or 4.7%) in 2024, the fourth fastest growth rate among all CMAs in the country and up 13.4% from 2019.
Together, over two-thirds of Calgary and Edmonton's explosive population gains were from international migrants (mostly net non-permanent residents) last year. The two cities were also hotspots for attracting Canadians from other parts of the country as they welcomed nearly 35,000 net interprovincial migrants, representing nearly 80% of Alberta's total interprovincial gains in 2024.
It was not just the CMAs that have experienced rapid population growth. Over the last five years, Canmore (+14.3%) and Sylvan Lake (+11.5%) attained top spots across all census agglomerations in Alberta for growth.
Despite Calgary posting massive population gains, the city lost a net 729 people to other parts of the province last year — the most since 2008. Meanwhile, Edmonton's CMA gained 2,924 from the rest of the province.
Learn more in this edition of The Twenty-Four.
For more number-crunching on Alberta's economy, visit The Twenty-Four Seven by ATB.