More than 171,000 workers earn less than living wage in Manitoba, report says

One in four workers in Manitoba struggles to afford basic needs and avoid poverty because they earn less than a living wage, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says.

There were 171,072 workers in Manitoba — approximately 25 per cent of all workers — earning less than a living wage of $19.21 per hour in 2023, based on labour force surveys from Statistics Canada, the organization said Thursday.

"No one should work full time but still live in poverty, but that's the harsh reality for far too many of Manitoba's minimum wage earners," Kevin Rebeck, president of the Manitoba Federation of Labour, said at the CCPA news conference where the report was released Thursday.

The new report, titled Struggling to Get Ahead, calculates the living wage based on what's needed to maintain a modest standard of living for a family with two parents working 35 hours a week and two young children. The calculations include income from government transfers, such as the Child Tax Benefit; deductions, such as income taxes, are also taken into account.

In Winnipeg, the living wage is now $19.21 an hour, in Brandon it is $15.69, and in Thompson it is $17.48, according to the CCPA, which says the main reason for the differences is the cost of housing.

Families with lower incomes are hit particularly hard by price increases, since they tend to spend a greater proportion of their income on essentials such as food, shelter, and transportation, and have a smaller cushion of disposable income relative to others, the report says.

"This is a bare bones budget that only covers the essentials," said the CCPA's Niall Harney. "It does not leave disposable income for families to take a vacation, to save for a house, to pay off debts or to provide care for a loved one in a time of need." 

The living wage in 2023 increased by 87 cents (Winnipeg), three cents (Brandon) and 85 cents (Thompson) over the living wage in 2022.

Minimum wage in Manitoba is $15.30 per hour and set to rise to $15.80 next week.

Rebeck called on Wab Kinew's NDP government to make Manitoba's minimum wage a living wage by repealing legislation implemented years ago by former Progressive Conservative premier Brian Pallister.

That legislation put "a hard cap" on minimum wage increases by allowing them to only be increased by the rate of inflation. Cabinet can approve an increase less than that, but not more, Rebeck said.

The CCPA has been creating a living wage report for 15 years but this one is the first to construct a detailed profile of those 171,072 workers who earn less than a living wage.

Those workers are disproportionately women (57.8 per cent) and recent immigrants (16.1 per cent), and a majority are in the prime of their working years between the ages of 25 and 54 (43.9 per cent), according to the report.

Only a small fraction of workers below age 25 earn a living wage or more (6.8 per cent).

Other findings include:

• 61.3% have some form of post-secondary education.
• 36.4% have a child who is less than 18 years old. The report's authors suggest raising the minimum wage to a living wage would have significant implications for reducing child poverty.
• 38% work part-time, with many citing care-giving responsibilities and a lack of full-time work as the primary reasons for working part-time.
• 52% work for a company with 100 or more staff and 32.9% have been with their current employer for more than five years.
• 52.2% work in the sales and service industries, 10.7% in trades, transport, and equipment operation, 10.4% in business, finance, and administration, 9.5% in education, law, and social, community, and government services, 5.9% in manufacturing and utilities, 4.8% in health.
• The vast majority (88.9%) are employed by the private sector.

"These results run counter to arguments that raising the minimum wage will only help teenagers living at home," Harney said.

The CCPA report recommends the provincial minimum wage be raised to the living wage level "in a predictable manner in order to minimize disruption in the labour market and to allow employers to adjust.

As well, more must be done to achieve affordable and accessible child care in order to remove the impediment to full-time work. Although Manitoba implemented a $10-a-day child-care plan in April 2023, child care deserts remain widespread and should be addressed, the CCPA report says.

It also calls for improved access to social housing and affordable housing, developing and implementing an affordable food strategy, and reducing the cost of public services such as public transportation.

"Despite the fear-mongering of business that the economy's going to collapse [with a large minimum wage increase], the opposite is true," Rebeck said.

"People spend that money back in the local economy and often those businesses do fairly well. Also, employers can't have it both ways — they can't say that they can't find workers and pay poverty-level wages."

But Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce president Loren Remillar said increasing the minimum wage won't help people in poverty, because it's not designed as an anti-poverty measure.

He said a different approach is needed.

"Let's tackle it in a responsible, logical, rational way by looking at the full range of government supports and programs. Let's take a look at all the factors that contribute to poverty and keep people in poverty," he said. "Calls for an adjustment to the minimum wage is a disservice actually to the bigger issue of what constitutes poverty." 

Brandon Chamber of Commerce president Lois Ruston says a minimum wage hike isn't for most businesses.

"Our business community, of course, has been incorporating the minimum wage increases as they have come and to look at an increase like is being called for, and particularly all at once, there's no way that could be supported within the current business climate," she said. 

Meanwhile, Rebeck thinks there could be some supports for some small businesses to help them cushion the impact of paying higher wages "but it shouldn't be some blanket rule that allows the McDonalds and Walmarts of the world to pay poverty-level wages while raking in record profits.

"That's just wrong."