Over a decade, average BC wages fall below Canadian average

Every week the government publication BC Stats Infoline publishes a summary of usually pretty interesting things going on in British Columbia.  They have a nice archive of these publications and it can be helpful to go back and look at earlier publications.

I looked at January 2001, the last year of the NDP government, and January this year for the beginning of the tenth year the Liberal government has been in office, for the subject of average weekly wages and found the following.

Ten years ago average weekly wages in BC were about three per cent higher than the average for Canada.  Now we have fallen to about 1.3% lower than the Canadian average.  Average weekly wages went up by $176 in BC and up by $208 in the rest of the country.

This can’t be blamed on the recession.  The whole country went through the recession and BC was hit less hard than a province like Ontario with its big manufacturing sector.

This is just one more thing to put into the mix when we are thinking about how well we have been managed economically for the last decade.  Apparently, everyone else has a little more money in their pockets than we do.

Topics: Economy, Employment & labour