Based on Friday's report, Alberta's unemployment rate is just under 5 per cent which is the lowest unemployment rate in Canada.

Many industries are facing labour issues and the agriculture industry definitely is one of them.

Al Dooley, a labour recruitment officer with Alberta Agriculture says we're in a sellers market for labour right now so that can add to the problems for employers.

"I think there's issues around younger people who seem to want to work in the cities, maybe agriculture on the primary side has lost some of the glamour it once had and there are opportunities in the oil patch, meaning higher paying jobs," he says "There are lots of things and when you add them all up it makes it tough for farmers to get workers."

Dooley says the average age of a farmer is continuing to go up and it's now at about 54-years-old.  

Alberta Agriculture has several programs to help farmers and encourage them to stick within the industry.

"We assist them with recruitment activities, we have a program that will cost share, for example if they want go to the Philippines and interview potential workers we can help them on some of the costs with that," Dooley says. "We also have a program to assist them with some retention things because they are interconnected. When you get a good worker, you want to keep them and there are things that can be done in that department as well."

Dooley says they also support things on productivity side.

"Whether it's mechanization or manufacturing and those kind of things, we support the industry with those kind of activities."

He says Agriculture Canada does it's part in assisting people on an individual level as well.

"If a farmers needs help filling in forms because hiring temporary foreign workers is kind of a bureaucratic process, there are rules and paper that needs to be filled out and a lot of the time people aren't familiar with what needs to be done."

Dooley says unemployment is an problem across Canada and it's a tough issue to solve.

"It gets to be a very difficult problem because the federal government tries to make policies and programs to fit the country as a whole and the conditions in the country as a whole are so diverse and so different, that it makes it very difficult, so I wish I knew the answer," Dooley says.