Income Trends "Outrageous and Shocking"

CLC President Ken Georgetti says income trends prove government failures.

Unless you're among the lucky few who are in the top income brackets, your financial gains during the past 25 years have been non existence. Recently released Statistics Canada census data showed that between 1980 and 2005, middle income people saw their inflation adjusted wages increase by a meagre $53 per year. People in the bottom 20 per cent of wage earners lost 20.6 per cent of their purchasing power. The only people who did well on average were those in the top 20 per cent of income earners who saw their incomes increase by an average of 16.4 per cent.

Census data showed a particularly bleak picture for women. In 2005 the average women worker under 29 years old earned 85 per cent of what her male counterparts were getting. Women over 45 years old were only getting 72 per cent of what men were earning. Worst off of all were new immigrants in Canada who have been here fewer than six years. Their earnings in 2005 crashed to just 48 per cent of what Canadian earners received that year.

"Over the last 25 years, the people we elected have let the greedy set the agenda," says Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress. "It is so outrageous how the people who already have the most have designed the economy for their own benefit. Excluding the rest of us, who actually own the country and make it work.

"What has happened over the last 25 years? Bad trade deals, minimum wage rates frozen below poverty lines, repeated legislative assaults on unionization, tax breaks for the rich, all these measures have made Canadians who work for wages poorer," explains Georgetti.

"These numbers explain why over the last two decades Canadians have lost faith in government and business. As prices for gas, food and other essentials are rising, these numbers remind us that more than ever Canadians need the leadership that strong unions provide," concludes Georgetti.