Raising B.C.’s minimum wage won’t help working poor
On June 1, the minimum wage in British Columbia increased from $11.35 to $12.65 per hour – the first in a series of hikes en route to $15.20 in 2021. That’s a 34 percent increase in three years. Despite claims from Premier John Horgan and others, raising the minimum wage is the wrong way to help B.C.’s working poor.
There’s a better policy option that warrants serious consideration.
To understand why the minimum wage is a bad way to fight poverty, consider that the overwhelming majority of minimum wage earners in B.C. are not poor. In fact, 84.3 percent of B.C. minimum wage earners are not part of a low-income family, as defined by Statistics Canada’s low-income cut-off.
This sounds counterintuitive but makes sense once you realize that minimum wage earners tend not to be the primary or sole earners in their families. Instead, they’re mostly inexperienced teenagers or young adults working part-time while in school, living at home with parents. In B.C., 55.7 percent of all minimum wage earners are between the ages of 15 and 24, and more than three-quarters of these young people live with family.