Minimum wage hike will make life more affordable: NDP
Alberta’s minimum wage has increased to $15. But stores and other businesses continue opening in Lethbridge.
As of Monday, Alberta has displaced Ontario as the best-paid province in Canada for entry-level workers. The $1.40 per hour increase is expected to help about 250,000 Albertans — about 11 per cent of the province’s workforce, with nearly two-thirds of them women.
While Alberta employers have warned pay hikes will force restaurants and small business to lay off employees or close, Statistics Canada reports restaurant sales in Alberta have reached a record high, up $18 million from a year ago, by August.
But across southern Alberta, an employment survey shows about 900 fewer people are working in hotels, restaurants and bars. “Every hard-working Albertan deserves to be paid fairly,” said Christina Gray, the province’s labour minister, as her New Democratic Party government fulfilled its plan for yearly increases to reach $15.
“The $15 minimum wage will make life more affordable for women, single parents, families and everyone who has been working a full-time job, but is still struggling to put food on the table and pay their rent,” she said in a news release.
More than half of all Albertans paid the minimum wage have a full-time job, labour department officials report, and 76 per cent of those jobs are considered permanent. More than 40 per cent of those employees are in the 20 to 34 age bracket, and 12 per cent are 55 or older.
Alberta’s employment in the lowest-paid jobs — including salespeople and service support — has increased by six per cent since the government began increasing the minimum wage in 2015, the department says. And employment in retail trade, the largest minimum-wage sector, increased 4.8 per cent during the 12-month period ending in August.
But while economic conditions are positive in Medicine Hat, Lethbridge and area, a new report indicates the hospitality industry is employing fewer men and women than a year ago — when the previous increase took effect.
Trevor Lewington, chief executive officer at Economic Development Lethbridge, says about 10,000 people were employed in that sector a year ago — but only 9,100 this year.
“That’s a data point, not a trend,” he cautions.
But Economic Development officials will be watching to see what effect the latest increase — the largest in the series — may make.
While the increase can mean “a significant amount of money” for workers, Lewington says, it will affect the profit margins of many employers.
“There are arguments on both sides,” he adds.
What some Alberta business people are saying, he notes, is that minimum wages should actually be dropped for employees under 18, and for those who serve alcohol.
Meanwhile, Alberta is about to see an employment spurt, he expects, when hundreds of marijuana retailers open for business later this month.
Follow @DMabellHerald on Twitter