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Helping clients erase the poverty line for themselves…
in the long-term
Editorial by Christian Saint Cyr
National Director / Canadian Job Development Network
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Statistics Canada has released the 2022 Salary Survey and we’re learning that nearly 10% of Canadian households are living below the poverty line and approximately 8.7 million people (22.9% of the population) live in households that report some form of food insecurity.
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In career development, we’re quick to divide employment challenges into three categories:
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Personal Challenges: This may include disabilities; family responsibilities; language ability; cultural understanding; mental and other health issues; faith-based observances; substance misuse; etc.
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Financial Challenges: These often relate to a lack of education or training; access to transportation; housing; credential recognition; working gear; etc.
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External Challenges: Overt discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, age, gender, language or physical attributes; preference for Canadian education, training, credentials and experience; or a selection process which demonstrates preference for some candidates over others.
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Addressing Personal and External Challenges is extremely difficult for career development practitioners. We can provide financial supports such as childcare, counselling and public education, such as information about human right legislation.
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Most career development programming focuses on addressing financial supports. These may include financial assistance with transportation, training, working gear, clothing supports, childcare, credential recognition, technology, wage subsidy and self-employment training.
And while these employment supports provide a critical financial bridge for those wanting to return to employment, it often ignores the fact that those who face employment challenges are often the very Canadians living below the poverty line.
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Through the 2022 Salary Survey, we see the median after-tax income for families and unattached individuals in 2022 was $70,500, which was actually a decline from previous years where the income was $73,700 in 2020 and $73,000 in 2021.
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And yet, those individuals who typically seek career development services, were far more likely to fall below Canada’s poverty line in 2022:
- Single individuals were far more likely to live in poverty. Over one-quarter (26.0%) of unattached individuals lived below the poverty line, a 4.1 percentage point increase from 2021 (21.9%) and nearly four times the 2022 poverty rate for people in families (6.6%).
- Female-led one-parent families are more likely to be in poverty. People in female-led one-parent families were almost four times more likely (23.8%) to live below the poverty line than people in couple families with children (6.3%).
- The poverty rate for individuals who are members of racialized groups was 13.0%. The 2022 poverty rates for the three largest racialized groups in Canada were 11.5% for South Asian Canadians, 15.6% for Chinese Canadians and 13.9% for Black Canadians.
- The gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people is widening. 17.5% of the Indigenous population aged 15 years and older lived below the poverty line. This is nearly double the poverty rate of the non-Indigenous population (9.6%).
- 12.3% of people with a disability aged 15 years and older lived below the poverty line, a 1.7 percentage point increase from 2021 (10.6%).
- 10.7% of immigrants aged 15 years and older lived below the poverty line, a 2.6 percentage point increase from 2021 (8.1%).
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There are steps we’re taking in the right direction. The minimum wage has gone up more than 50% in the past decade. As an example, in British Columbia the minimum wage was $10.45 in 2015 and will have risen to $17.40 this June. In Ontario where the minimum wage was $11.25 in 2015, it is now due to increase to $17.20 this October.
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The rising minimum wage and the CERB benefit was a significant factor in driving down the poverty level to just 6.4 per cent during 2020. Sadly, in the years since, due to rapidly rising inflation and interest rates, we’ve seen the percentage of Canadians living in poverty rise rapidly, reaching 7.4 per cent in 2021 and nearly 10 per cent (9.9%) in 2022.
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People often talk about the ‘hardest jobs’ and might note examples such as teachers, police officers or nurses. And while I wouldn’t dispute those are all extremely difficulty occupations, I’ll note that a secondary school teacher earns a median salary of $45.30 per hour; a police officer earns $48.08 per hour; and a registered nurse earns $40.39 per hour. Meanwhile a food counter attendant is earning a median salary of $15.00 per hour in Canada, would have difficulty getting full-time hours, may not qualify for benefits and often doesn’t have the financial cushion to navigate a long-term job search.
Clearly there are enormous challenges to face in the job market for those who lack education, training and certification. We are in the midst of a skills shortage and sadly when the province or the federal government provides training, it rarely exceeds one year in length and there are few training options, lasting less than a year, that will provide a lucrative or even sustainable career pathway.
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For this reason, I believe a critical part of our work in career development needs to focus on educating clients on the benefits of career laddering. This notion is that our clients or students need to take ownership of their own career pathways beyond the intervention of our services.
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Apprenticeship is a classic example of where this support may come into play. We can provide entry into the construction or manufacturing sectors with training, and then by participating in a long-term apprenticeship, the client can build the skill set to achieve long-term employment; laddering into a better career.
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I believe we should be doing training with all clients hoping to achieve a ‘survival job’ on the pathways that can significantly improve their employment outcomes over time. These might include apprenticeship, but could also focus on night school, in-house management training, self-employment and ongoing professional-development.
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Today clients may be content with a survival job, but I will caution all of you that these jobs have the greatest number of available workers and are the most subject to elimination through automation and artificial intelligence.
We are entering an era where each of us will be measured on our unique abilities to do our work, to be subject matter experts who rely on inter-personal skills, empathy, persuasion, creativity, problem solving, situational analysis, care and concern. One of the best skills we can leave our clients or students with is their level of investment in their own careers and ability to grow in them regardless of what job they are looking for today.
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We’ll be discussing the enormous challenge of poverty in career development and how we can better support these individuals at our #MotivatingMondays meeting of the Canadian Job Development Network, Monday April 29th at 8:30am Pacific; 9:30am Mountain; 10:30am Central; 11:30am Eastern; 12:30pm Atlantic and at 1pm in Newfoundland. Visit: www.MotivatingMondays.ca on Monday to join the session LIVE.
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