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An office tower under construction in Calgary, Alberta. Recent figures show some 18,000 people have been laid off in the city due to low oil prices.Chris Bolin/The Globe and Mail

Maybe I shouldn't tell you this.

The economy in Alberta is in rough shape.

The effects are acute in Calgary, where oil patch layoffs are the order of the day due to the collapse in crude prices. It's hitting many families hard.

The nervousness about it at city hall is palpable, as shown last week when the city's manager and chief administrative officer, Jeff Fielding, told a committee that reporting by certain news outlets was making the situation even worse. In essence, investors in major financial centres are getting wind of this.

Banks and pension funds are being persuaded that Calgary "is a no-invest city," Mr. Fielding said. "And the negative reporting that the city has gone through, specifically the national reporting, in the The Globe and Mail and those types of publications, has really exaggerated the circumstances, not only within the province, but certainly within Calgary."

It's hard to blame Mr. Fielding for suggesting that the messenger is doing damage to the city's reputation as a solid locale for investment. After all, the positives still exist – a young, highly skilled population, business-friendly tax regime, enviable transport infrastructure, relatively affordable real estate and moderate climate, save the odd hailstorm and flood.

But the mood washing across the city is one of trepidation. The fact is, the energy industry is an engine of the economy, and its fortunes dictate those of numerous other businesses that support, feed and house people throughout the city.

Banks and pension funds already know this, just as they know the complexities of the global oil world – the supply, demand and geopolitical factors that push prices up and down. Currently, they're down.

The national media's job is to provide Canadians with the stories behind the downturn, and, within the business pages, to spotlight the economic and financial risks that lurk under the surface.

So what's to exaggerate? In the past week, federal statistics showed that Alberta's unemployment rate surpassed the national average for the first time since the 1980s as oil companies shed employees. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers has estimated the industry's direct job losses at more than 40,000 since oil cratered. Spinoff estimates are much higher.

The NDP government forecasts its annual deficit at $6.1-billion, and credit rating agencies have either downgraded the province's debt or warned that it's a real possibility.

Commercial and residential real estate data keep worsening, with unleased space in office towers downtown hitting records and year-to-date housing sales down 26 per cent from a year ago.

Even Mayor Naheed Nenshi has urged the federal government to make haste deploying promised stimulus spending to get people back to work on major infrastructure projects.

Certainly, public attitudes within Alberta are anything but sunny. A recent Ipsos poll showed just 14 per cent of Albertans think their economy is strong, compared with more than 50 per cent of those surveyed in December, 2014.

Even more worrisome, just a fifth of Alberta residents believe their personal finances are in good shape, compared with nearly half 13 months ago. It's likely that a good portion of personal investments are made up of energy shares, many of which have shed more than half their value in the past 18 months.

In the province, 74 per cent see unemployment and jobs as the top national issue, up from about 35 per cent in the last survey. It replaced health care as the overriding concern.

The national media, and, in fact, the local media, too, are obligated to report all of this economic data, and the personal stories behind it, gloomy though it can be.

It will also be incumbent upon journalists to look for signs of recovery when they appear – and they most assuredly will – and how it affects Calgarians, other Albertans and the rest of the country when workers are in high demand again.

I wager there will be little complaint about that.

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