By Cheryl Jahn

Minimum wage

Pros and cons to minimum wage hike

Jun 3, 2025 | 11:10 AM

PRINCE GEORGE – As of last week, the minimum wage rose by 45 cents over the previous year. Here’s how the minimum wage has developed over the last seven years: It went from $13.85 in 2019, rising by $4 per hour as of June 1 this year.

“Of course, there is a cost to employers because they know that. And that also has inflationary pressure. So it starts rolling out into the economy. And then, of course, for those businesses in the retail sector, in the restaurant sector, how are they going to accommodate those increased labour costs? They’ll pass it on to consumers,” explains Neil Godbout, executive director with the Prince George Chamber of Commerce

But Godbout says, while the costs of labour may impact the cost of goods, it may also drive decisions by business owners about who and how they hire.

“One hundred per cent, right? Because every time minimum wage gets raised, that’s actually a discouragement to a small business to hire, ‘Am I going to hire additional staff?”

Each year, Living Wage BC calculates what’s called the living wage. And it varies from community to community. Prince George has one of the lowest of peer communities in the province. But they’ve done some research with interesting results.

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“And so the living wage is calculated out for a family of four with two parents, two kids and what they need to get by. For the first time, we did draft calculations for the living wage for different family types. That’s a single parent with one child and a single person without kids. And actually, in Prince George, the living wage for a single person without children came out to be higher than that of a two-parent, two-child family, which is a bit surprising because kids are really expensive,” explains Anastasia French, Provincial Manager for Living Wage BC.

However.

“Where I struggle is, what if minimum wage for?” asks Godbout. “And that’s where I’ve yet to hear a fully satisfactory explanation from the provincial government is, if minimum wage is supposed to be a cost-of-living wage, then it’s not a cost-of-living wage.”

And there’s another hitch. “Over the past couple of years, the government have increased the minimum wage in line with general inflation. And that’s good news for the lowest paid workers in BC, because it means that every year they’re guaranteed a pay increase. It’s also good news for business. It means that they can reliably predict what the minimum wage is going to be about six months out so that there are steady increases for business and for the workers,” says French. “The challenge we have, though, is that the minimum wage is going up in line with general inflation and the basic essentials, the basic costs like food and rent, keep going up at a much higher rate than general inflation.”

The Province argues it is addressing the gap by providing things like 10-dollar-a-day daycare and better public transit.