Canada: Wage Gap Increasing, Job Quality Falling

Canada’s wage gap in widening and resulting in a decrease of job quality, according to a new report from CIBC.

Using figures from Statistics Canada, the report found that the amount of workers receiving below-average wages rose to nearly 61% in 2015.

Young people and over-55’s are stuck in the low-wage job sector, primarily in service jobs. Furthermore, around 53% of workers aged 25-54 had jobs that paid between 50% and 100% of the average wage.

“The distribution of employment in Canada is not as favorable as it used to be, looking strictly at compensation,” says the report. “Lower quality employment might help to explain the sluggish growth in personal income in the past two decades and might provide some insights on the ability of workers, in aggregate, to absorb future economic shocks.”