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According to StatsCan’s income survey, the median after-tax income for a Calgary family dropped in 2015 from 2014.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

The fallout from the oil collapse started hitting Calgary families in 2015, according to new data released on Friday, even as the median income in Alberta remained well above the country as a whole.

The median after-tax income for a Calgary family dropped to $97,900 in 2015 from $107,200 in the previous year. In comparison, the same measure of income for a Canadian family was under $77,000, according to Statscan's income survey.

"A lot of the changes were among families that already had a good level of income," said Trevor Tombe, assistant professor of economics at the University of Calgary. "We are seeing some of the recession in these numbers."

Even after oil prices lost half their value, wages in the province remained elevated. In 2015, the median employment income in Alberta was $40,600 compared with $33,100 in all of Canada, according to the survey, in which the most recent data is for 2015.

The multiyear oil sands boom drove up wages in Alberta. The average weekly earnings for natural resources worker in the province are still more than double the national average. And as the corporate home for most of Canada's oil and gas companies, Calgary has families that enjoy some of the highest pay in the country.

The share of employees who earned more than $100,000 a year was consistently higher in Calgary than the rest of the country, according to the survey. However, the percentage of Calgarians who earned more than six figures in employment income declined to 15 per cent in 2015 from 18 per cent the previous year.

As Calgary's fortunes dwindled in the early stages of the oil downturn, Edmonton's outlook appeared to improve. The median after-tax income for an Edmonton family rose to $99,200 in 2015 from $92,500 in the previous year.

For a single person in Edmonton, income increased to $38,900 from $35,700 over the same time period. In comparison, the same income measure for a single person in Calgary fell to $37,200 from $43,400, according to the data.

"When new investment drops off, that hits harder the headquarter-related jobs," Prof. Tombe said. "Those are disproportionally located in Calgary."

The survey reflects the early stages of the energy downturn. When oil prices sank below $40 (U.S.) a barrel, energy companies put projects on hold and eliminated thousands of jobs in the field and corporate offices. The losses spread to the rest of Alberta's economy and pushed the jobless rate as high as 9 per cent last year.

The StatsCan data show that despite being in the early part of a recession, Alberta had fewer people in the low-income category – 6.9 per cent – than every other province in 2015. In Ontario, the percentage was 14. The Atlantic provinces and Quebec were above 16 per cent, according to StatsCan.

Prof. Tombe and other economists say a clearer picture on how the oil downturn affected income will be seen when StatsCan releases its 2016 survey.

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