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Average Canadian wages
If you’re looking to earn as much money as possible when you emigrate to Canada, then your best bet may well be to live in Ontario and work in computers
These are the findings of a new Statistics Canada report which compared average wages from 1997 to those paid in 2007. According to the data, employees in Ontario earn an average wage of CDN$19.77 (approximately £10) an hour – 5.4 per cent more than workers in the province were paid ten years ago – while workers in the computer and telecommunications sector are paid an average of CDN$22.46 (approx. £11.35) an hour, the highest median earnings of any industry in Canada. However, it is workers in the country's second-best paid province, Alberta, who have benefited most from pay increases over the past ten years.
In 1997, the average wage in the resource-rich province was CDN$17.23 an hour, but by 2007 this had risen to CDN$19.54 – an increase of 13.4 per cent, far exceeding the average nationwide wage increase of 6.3 per cent. What's more, Alberta has the fewest proportion of workers earning under CDN$10 in an hour, with only 11.8 per cent of the province's workforce earning less than this amount, compared to over 21 per cent in 1997. Saskatchewan (a 10.7 per cent increase), Newfoundland and Labrador (10.3 per cent), and Nova Scotia (10 per cent) all also recorded double digit wage growth over this ten-year period.
The lowest median wage growth over the past decade occurred in British Columbia where hourly pay rose just 4.5 per cent from CDN$18.58 to CDN$19.11, while Quebec also experienced a rise below that of the national average – 4.5 per cent, taking the average hourly rate to CDN$18. Despite wages increasing by a healthy 8.7 per cent, however, employees in Prince Edward Island are nevertheless on average the worst-paid workers in Canada, netting just CDN$14.45 (approx. £7.30) an hour. The province is also home to the highest number of people working for less than CDN$10 an hour (33.6 per cent), although the percentage of workers earning more than CDN$25 an has risen from 5.3 per cent in 2001 to 9.9 per cent in 2007.
Nationally, the average wage is CDN$18.80 an hour. In terms of which industries tend to pay the most, employees in the primary industries and construction sector earned the most after computer and telecommunications workers (CDN$20.46 on average), while those employed in public services receive a median hourly rate of CDN$19.63. Unsurprisngly, the low-skilled service industry, which included occupations such as cashiers, retail salespersons, sales clerks and food and beverage workers, was the lowest average hourly earning industry in Canada – just CDN$10.21 an hour, up only slightly from CDN$9.91 ten years ago.
Just under half of all low-skilled service workers earn less than CDN$10 an hour. The Statistics Canada report also reveals that in terms of individual occupations in the private sector, specialist managers (CDN$29.03 an hour), engineers (CDN$28.52), and computer and information systems professionals (CDN$24.32) were the highest earners, and cashiers, retail salespersons and sales clerks the lowest (CDN$8.74).
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