It’s a metric that is important in measuring the potency of an economy but one that seems to get very little attention. That’s the number of head offices housed in a jurisdiction. And, on this one, Saskatchewan is not especially strong.
That is in contrast to Alberta which developed a specific policy to attract head offices. Back when the legendary Peter Lougheed was premier, he was known to have said he was tired of having decisions made in the boardrooms of Toronto that were impacting his province. So, he set out to attract more corporate leaders to his province.
Saskatchewan has never been as aggressive about this notion and it shows in the latest numbers. They come from 2022 and we have 79 major head offices located here, down about eight per cent in the previous five years. Edmonton, by contrast, saw no change and Calgary fell five per cent.
The number of people working in Saskatchewan head offices fell almost 15 per cent in the most recent five years. That is roughly on par with most of the country which saw job numbers shrinking in corporate offices across the board.
