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What it takes to escape persistent low-income employment
Editorial by Christian Saint Cyr
National Director / Canadian Job Development Network
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Recently, Statistics Canada published a report titled, 'Who experiences persistent low-income? A study of various demographic groups from 2016 to 2022', which found approximately 13 per cent of working Canadians fall into this low-income category and they are at tremendous risk of job loss and redundancy.
While AI is likely to be a powerful tool for many high-wage professions, it is already replacing workers in minimum wage roles and even those which require higher skill levels such as receptionists, switch-board operators and data administrators.
To be clear, I don't want to criticize minimum wage jobs. At my core, I believe there is great dignity in 'work'. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, "If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.'"
I'm constantly amazed by people who are doing an incredible job in relatively low-paying jobs in hospitality, food service and retail.
Furthermore, there are many people who are doing these jobs and loving them, the customers they serve, the organizations they work for and the co-workers they get to work with everyday.
I'm not criticizing low-income jobs, just cautioning that to continue to work in low-income jobs is going to get more difficult and precarious as both the cost of living and the role of AI continue to accelerate.
In the low-income report, Statistics Canada defines 'low-income' as follows: “if a family’s after-tax income is less than half the median adjusted family income, the individuals in that family are considered to be in low-income.”
What does that mean?
No where in the report, do they define an actual dollar amount. They just contrast low-income against not low-income.
There are good reasons for this. The cost of living and average incomes are very different across Canada as well as in urban vs. rural areas. What if someone works full-time vs. part-time.
According to Statistics Canada's 'Distribution of Earnings' published just last week, the median annual salary for men and women in Canada in 2024 was $46,400 to $47,500 per year.
The 'Average Earnings 2024', also published by Statistics Canada, noted the average hourly wage is $35.20 per hour. This is the average wage and not the median wage, but the data gives us a sense of how we might define 'low-wage'.
If 'low-wage' is half the median-wage all workers are earning, this would suggest a low-wage would be between $23,200 and $23,750 per year. It would also indicate a low-wage would be approximately $17.60 per hour or close to minimum-wage in most provinces and territories.
In 2016, the proportion of Canadians earning a low wage began to decline, and in 2020 it actually dropped below 10%, at a time when many people received financial support from the government because of economic shutdowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the proportion of people in low income began to rise in 2021. By 2023, it was back to 12%, which was comparable to the low-income rate in 2019.
From 2016 to 2022, 9% of tax filers aged 15 and older experienced persistent low-income, meaning they fell under the low-income measure after tax for at least four of the seven years in the study period.
Women, single parents, those with disabilities and those with limited education are much more challenged by low-income. People in female lone-parent families (23%), people without a high school diploma (21%), and people who reported they always had limitations in their daily activities (18%) were more at risk of low-income persistence, compared to the overall population.
Tax filers without a high school diploma were three times more likely to have low-income in 2016 than those with a university degree, and they were five times more likely to have persistent low-income during the period from 2016 to 2022.
Education appears to be a major factor, even when individuals experience greater challenges. The gap in low-income persistence between female lone-parent families and couples with children was wider for those without a high school diploma (24 percentage points) than for those with a university degree (just 7 percentage points).
It also appears that low-income is a difficult thing to escape. Of those who exited low-income in 2017, 20 per cent re-entered low income in 2018. Among that group, one in five remained in low-income for the remainder of the study period.
It is clearly challenging times we live in, but I believe we are in a unique position to support people to make proactive choices.
I was having a pretty intense discussion with Gen Z recently who just couldn't buy into the idea that work could be something he looked forward to, that he enjoyed. He kept saying, "I'll do the job they're paying me to do," but just felt work was a burden and necessary to having a life outside of work.
As I've grown older, I've become very cautious of using the phrase 'love your work', because I think this is really hard for people to understand and I would say most people don't love their work.
They may like there colleagues, their customers and they may gain satisfaction from many of their day-to-day activities, but if they had the option of doing something else and not continue in their work, they'd jump at the chance.
I'm trying to rally people around the idea that people can really like their work, what they do and the people they do it with. That work isn't just emotionally and psychologically rewarding, but it should also be financially rewarding.
During the pandemic, it was the low-wage workers who were cut loose and the higher-wage workers that were handed a laptop and asked to work from home.
Granted, a barista or a barber can't really work from home, but it was a clear illustration that employers value high-wage and low-wage jobs differently.
Now you may be actively working to help some get a minimum wage job and you may have individuals who would be excited and grateful to obtain this work.
I don't want to diminish people's short-term goals but to talk about long-term aspirations. So often, we're working with the person who's been laid off three times in the last five years. The person who's been working in seasonal employment for years and it's getting even more seasonal all the time.
I'd like to suggest, as part of our short-term work with people, we simply caution them about the future.
Twenty years from now, even ten years from now, there will be far fewer entry-level jobs people can get into without some sort of education and training, but there will still be a very large group of people actively applying for those jobs.
Even now, it's the entry-level jobs that get dozens if not hundreds of applications and it is the skilled jobs, the ones that require credentials, that only get a handful of applicants.
'Skills' will be the defining factor in this skills shortage in the decade to come. These might be skills acquired through credentials, education or a combination of education, training and experience.
With this caution in mind, we need to help people develop plans they can execute long after our work with them is done.
I believe apprenticeship is a highly-structured, easily measured way of people achieving these employment outcomes. Not only does it reinforce valuable training, but it results in a measurable outcome.
Certainly, pursuing a certificate, diploma or degree is an important pathway, but it is essential employers value the credential and see it as a necessary pathway to employment.
One of the ways we can support people in the short-term is by promoting the concept of 'career laddering'. Perhaps someone is pursuing employment as a construction labourer today, but they later pursue foundations training in framing. This training leads to apprenticeship and apprenticeship leads to a Red Seal in carpentry. Labourers are the most precarious jobs in the construction industry and carpenters are one of the most secure.
I've often believed that everyone has something more they are capable of. Perhaps it's the Registered Nurse who completes their training as a Nurse Practitioner; or the care aide who completes the Licensed Practical Nurse or Registered Practical Nurse program.
Perhaps, it's just someone who seeks opportunities to pursue supervisory, management or other leadership roles.
Valuable skills, knowledge and abilities are the armour that will guard against AI, increases in the cost of living and job irrelevance. Each one of us has the capability of guiding this process and we make decisions either by being proactive, moving forward in new directions, or choosing not to make decisions and carry down the same pathway we’re on.
Before we wrap up this conversation, I want to address an issue many of you might be concerned about and that is the employment challenges faced by those with developmental disabilities with physical, learning, language and behavioural impairments which could limit their ability develop the skills that will be required in an increasingly complex workplace.
In this new workplace, I believe there is still going to be a place for job-carving. Not only are we entering into a multi-decade skills shortage but our existing population doesn't come close to meeting our workforce needs. While AI and other automation can perform a vast array of tasks, there are some tasks it is utterly hopeless at performing and there will be opportunities to gather together those tasks from both skilled professionals and leaders to create jobs that will be essential.
As I said, I believe all of us are capable of pushing ourselves a little further. A good friend of mine with a developmental disability recently completed her first aid training as a next step in working in childcare.
I would encourage those with developmental challenges to pursue employment in workplaces where there is a high-degree of human interaction; where dedication, reliability, focus, unique problem solving abilities, empathy, determination and creativity are valued.
The future is not an 'either-or' scenario. AI will not replace all jobs and yet it will significantly change most. Ironically, AI appears to be displacing workers most in the tech sector, the very workers who have strived to create it.
Regardless of a person's challenges, I believe the qualities most needed for people to escape low-wage jobs is to invest in themselves in the form of skills and knowledge development; to pursue better career opportunities, to develop the necessary skills; and to embrace the skills and abilities that are most human.
For our part, while short-term employment and placement opportunities may be our only stated goal, preparing people with career plans, occupational ladders, information about apprenticeship and discussions about ongoing education and training can be the contribution we make that has the greatest long-term impact on our clients' or students' lives..
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We’ll be discussing the impact of low-wage jobs at our #MotivatingMondays meeting of the Canadian Job Development Network, Tuesday February 17th at 8:30am Pacific; 9:30am Mountain; 10:30am Central; 11:30am Eastern; 12:30pm Atlantic and at 1pm in Newfoundland.
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On the morning of Tuesday Feb. 17th 'Click this Link' to join the session LIVE.
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Labour Market 101 Training Modules
for British Columbia and Ontario
REGISTRATION CLOSES NEXT WEEK
Thursday February 26th
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We're gathering final registration for our annual Labour Market 101 Training Modules. This is an excellent introduction to important LMI divided up into five different occupations:
Resource Room Advisors (Mon. Mar. 2nd);
Employment Case Managers (Tues. Mar. 3rd);
Facilitators (Wed. Mar. 4th);
Job Developers (Thurs. Mar. 5th); and
Managers / Supervisors (Fri. Mar. 6th)
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We have two series planned, one for British Columbia career professionals and another for Ontario. To learn more, click on one of these links:
BC LMI 101 Training Modules
Ontario LMI 101 Training Modules
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or to learn more, email Christian Saint Cyr, at: csaintcyr@labourmarketonline.com.
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