gambling in alberta - Research Services - University of Lethbridge

although this database was provided to the Research Team by AGLC, it proved to be of limited
utility as gaming employees are not routinely removed from the registry when they leave the
industry, which does not permit a determination of number of gaming employees at any given
time. This registry information also does not contain information on employment prior to
becoming a registered gaming employee. Knowing whether the new employee was previously
unemployed or not and, if he/she was previously employed, which industry sector he/she came
from is critical in helping to understand whether these gaming jobs are ‘new’ jobs or are simply
jobs that have been redirected from other sectors of the economy.
A second, more useful source of information on gambling industry employment and wages
among gaming employees is available from Statistics Canada. The Survey of Employment,
Payrolls and Hours is derived from the Business Payroll Survey collected by Revenue Canada.
Pertinent data from this survey is presented below in Table 32. This table indicates the annual
number of employees in Alberta who can be classified as working for ‘Gambling Industries’ as
defined by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) (code 7132). This
includes everyone employed in ‘casinos’, ‘lotteries’ and ‘other gambling industries’. However, it
does not appear to include the estimated 3,084 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions of people
who indirectly or directly worked in the horse racing industry in 2001 (Econometric Research,
2001) or the 2,753 estimated FTE positions in 2007 (Serecon Management, 2009).
Table 32 indicates that the number of gambling employees in Alberta increased from 2,800 in
1991 to 4,600 in 2009. However, this increase is roughly equivalent to the increases seen in the
general Alberta workforce, with gambling employees constituting slightly less than 0.3% of the
Alberta workforce throughout this period. This is a fairly small workforce for what is now an
annual $2.5 billion industry. However, since 1994 the large majority of Alberta gambling
revenue has come from automated electronic gambling machines (VLTs and slot machines)
(73% of all revenue in 2009), and EGMs are the least labour-intensive form of gambling.
The wages and working conditions of Alberta gambling employees do not tend to be as
favourable as employees in other sectors of the Alberta workforce. For one thing, the large
majority of gambling employees in Canada are paid by the hour rather than on salary, with this
percentage increasing from 80% in 1997 to 85% in 2009. By comparison, 61% of Canadian nongambling
employees were paid by the hour in 1997 and 65% in 2009 (Marshall, 2010). Average
wages are also lower, as seen in Table 32. For hourly gambling employees, their hourly wage is
not only lower than the Alberta workforce, but has steadily gone done as a percentage of the
Alberta hourly wage, from approximately 77% in 1991 to 64% in 2009. Wages tend to be more
favourable for salaried gambling employees, whose wages have tended to be in the range of
70% to 90% of Alberta salaried employees in this time period. In general, the lower wages of
the gambling workforce is likely reflective of the fact that many gambling employees are not
highly skilled (53% of gambling employees in Canada in 2009 had a high school education or
less compared to 40% in the general Canadian workforce) (Marshall, 2010). Other relevant
factors are that gambling employees have also tended to be slightly younger than the Canadian
workforce and have historically been more likely to be female (although there is now an equal
sex ratio as of 2009) (Marshall, 2010).
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