The minimum wage in Ontario was just bumped again last month, but with costs of housing, food, and more in the province being as high as they are, new stats reveal that the living wage — what someone would need to earn to live comfortably and out of poverty — is still far higher than what many are getting paid, especially in Toronto.
The Ontario Living Wage Network regularly assesses what it costs the average person in different parts of the province to get by, and its latest report does not paint a favourable picture of life in the GTA.
As the organization wrote on Monday, despite inflation slowing pace this year, the cost of basic goods and services has increased enough to push the amount one needs to live well in the region up by 3.8 per cent, to $26 an hour.
This is more than 1.5x the hourly minimum wage in Ontario ($17.20 as of October 1), and is the highest of any corner of the province. Still, even in less expensive areas, minimum wage isn’t enough to cover current costs of living.
Chart of grocery expenses across Ontario published by the Ontario Living Wage Network on November 18.
“Despite the annual October 1st increase to the provincial minimum wage to $17.20, there is still no place in Ontario where you could work full-time and cover all your expenses,” the network writes of minimum wage earners in 2024.
“The problem of working poverty is complex, and is the product of issues of affordability, policy, cultural norms and attitudes about the value of work and more. Yet the most expedient first step is to simply ensure that a day’s work can cover that day’s expenses.”
Chart of shelter expenses across Ontario published by the Ontario Living Wage Network on November 18.
While the Toronto area was unsurprisingly found to require the highest living wage, some other cities saw larger annual increases both proportionately and in dollar amounts.
In Ottawa, the figure rose 3.9 per cent from 2023 ($21.95 an hour) to 2024 ($22.80 an hour), while the surrounding “East” part of the province that includes places like Coburg, Kingston and Kawartha Lakes saw a 5.1 per cent spike, from $20.60 last year to $21.65 this year.
The annual change in the Southwest region (encompassing Sarnia, Windsor and Chatham) was the largest, with the estimated necessary living wage climbing from $18.65 to $19.85, or 6.4 per cent. The dollar amount change in the Southwest was also the most, at $1.20, though it remains the second-cheapest place to live after London-Elgin-Oxford, where one needs to make about $19.50 an hour to make ends meet.
Both the GTA and East region saw the second-highest dollar amount spikes, of $1.05 year-over-year.
The most recent living wages in different parts of the province, according to the Ontario Living Wage Network.
The report says that rent and groceries remain the largest contributors to these rising numbers, as though “historically living wage rate increases have been fairly similar to the rate of inflation… general inflation itself cannot fully explain recent changes in living wage rates.”
While inflation between 2018 and 2022 skyrocketed by 13.4 per cent overall, the costs of the “modest basket of goods and services” that the firm uses to calculate living wage — which is mostly comprised of shelter and food, and to a lesser extent, communication, transportation, clothing and other costs — soared more than 18 per cent.
The goal of the Living Wage Network is, of course, to get more employers to pay at least the living wage in the places they are working and living. It even offers a formal certification for those that meet the criteria.
