DOWNTOWN ABBEY
That’s not a typo, it’s the new reality. Toronto has become the working-poor capital of Canada, where a well-to-do knowledge class relies on a pool of poorly paid service workers, a new report finds
Toronto has become the Downton Abbey of Canada, home to the country’s largest and fastest-growing concentration of working poor who are toiling in the service of the city’s burgeoning knowledge sector, according to a new report.
The analysis, by social policy expert John Stapleton, bolsters a recent United Way report on growing inequality in Toronto and research earlier this month that shows Ontario’s minimum wage continues to trap too many area workers in poverty.
The Toronto region has the highest percentage of working poor in the country, with more than 9 per cent of workers or 264,000 adults living on poverty-level wages. That’s an 11 per cent increase since 2006, says the report being released Monday.
Vancouver follows closely in second place at 8.7 per cent, while most other Canadian cities hover around the national average of 6.6 per cent, says the report funded by the Metcalf Foundation, a private family foundation dedicated to equity, sustainability and the arts.
“Canada’s two richest cities are becoming giant modern-day Downton Abbeys where a well-to-do knowledge class relies on a large cadre of working poor who pour their coffee, serve their food, clean their offices, and relay their messages from one office to another,” it says, referring to the popular British TV drama about an aristocratic family and their servants.
Knowledge workers include senior managers and professionals in business, finance, government, law, education, health care, media, arts, sports and entertainment.
The report is an update of Stapleton’s landmark 2012 research which showed Toronto’s working poor grew by a staggering 42 per cent in the first five years of the millennium. (Although this earlier work was based on the long-form census, which no longer exists, Stapleton has used Statistics Canada tax filer data to replicate his 2012 findings and inform his latest report.)
He defines the working poor as non-students between the ages of 18 and 65, living independently, earning more than $3,000 but less than the low income measure (LIM), defined as 50 per cent of the median income.
By that measure, a single person in 2011 with annual earning of less than $19,930, after taxes and government transfers, was considered working poor. In today’s dollars, it would be about $20,800. For a family of four, it would be just over $41,600.
The “good news,” Stapleton says, is that the rate of increase in working poverty in Toronto has slowed from a decade ago.
But despite an improving economy, increases to the minimum wage and new income supports such as the federal Working Income Tax Benefit, Universal Child Care Benefit and Ontario Child Benefit, working poverty in the city continues to climb.
In the city of Toronto, where almost 11 per cent, or 142,000 adults, are living in working poor households, working poverty is concentrated in the inner suburbs of North York (13 per cent) Scarborough (12 per cent) and York (10 per cent).
It has also begun to spill into York and Peel regions where the cities of Markham and Brampton lead with working poverty rates of10.2 per cent and 9.6 per cent respectively, according to the report.
“For the first time, working poverty is growing faster in the outer suburbs like Markham, Brampton and Richmond Hill compared to south of Steeles, Ave.,” Stapleton says. It grew in Markham by 26 per cent, in Brampton by 22 per cent and in Richmond Hill by 21 per cent.
Stapleton suspects it is largely because housing in the city of Toronto is becoming too expensive for lowwage workers.
“What is the difference between the working poor in Toronto’s downtown core and the working poor in Downton Abbey?” Stapleton asks. “The working poor in Downton Abbey can afford to live there.”
Toronto’s “rich city, poor city” status is explained by the area’s high concentration of knowledge work and entry-level service jobs relative to middle skill, middle income jobs. It is made worse by the rise of parttime, contract and temporary jobs and corporate restructuring that has turned entry-level jobs into deadend positions, , Stapleton says. “Employment income matters. And changes in the labour market are making it difficult for may people to earn enough money to stay afloat,” he said.
Labour market policy expert Tom Zizys says employers need to reconsider their “just-in-time” labour practices that are trapping workers in low-wage entry-level positions and causing a shortage of employees with “soft skills” savvy.
In the past, when entry-level workers advanced up the career ladder, they learned the crucial soft skills of corporate culture such as how to develop contacts and networks within the company, he says.
“The skills shortage that people talk about is not a skills shortage, it’s an experience shortage. And that experience is only acquired in the workplace,” Zizys says. “We need to raise the bar in terms of what we expect of employers.”
Labour activists could profile successful companies that continue to train their own workers through the old career-ladder model, such as membership-based wholesaler Costco, he says.
Government could help by providing incentives to employers to contribute to sector-wide training, perhaps in partnership with colleges or universities, such as the Hospitality Sector Training Centre, supported by local hotels and union locals, he adds.
“Addressing the growth in working poverty isn’t just good social policy, it’s good economic policy,” Zizys says.
“The working poor cannot buy homes on their wages and many use food banks and other services to meet their basic needs,” the report says.
“We have to keep thinking about the acceptability of working poverty in Canada’s richest city.” Toronto factory worker Violet Sinclair has not had a pay raise in 12 years.
It means her once mediocre pay of $11.25 an hour at a Vaughan furniture manufacturer, where she has worked full-time since 2000, will soon amount to nothing more than minimum wage.
Ontario’s benchmark rate rises to $11.25 in October.
“When you ask for a raise, they say: ‘There is the door. . . ,’ ” she says.
But Sinclair, who came to Canada from Guyana with her three teenaged children in the mid-1990s, wouldn’t dream of quitting.
“At my age, what can you do? Where can you turn?” says the 62year old grandmother. “I am a very flexible and active person. I am a good worker. And I love to work. I just wish they would pay me for my hard work.”
Sinclair pays about $1,100 a month for her two-bedroom apartment near Jane St. and Lawrence Ave., an area where working poverty has exploded since 2000. She has tried to downsize to cut costs, but says she can’t find a onebedroom that’s much cheaper.
According to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. the average monthly rent for one-bedroom apartment in the city is $1,067.
“I’m pretty much living paycheque to paycheque,” she says. After rent, utilities, insurance and TTC fare, Sinclair figures she has between $350 and $400 a month left to pay for everything else.
If she got a pay raise, Sinclair says she’d take a foreign vacation and send money home to relatives in Guyana when they need help.
“I cannot afford cable or internet. And I’d like to have all that,” she says. “I’d like to have a nice big-screen TV, which I don’t have. And I’d like to eat good food to maintain my health.”
For entertainment, Sinclair says she visits a cousin who enjoys cooking.
“I’m grateful for that,” she says. “She even gives me TTC tokens because she knows I can’t afford very much.”
Judith Bucknor has done everything she can to escape poverty since moving from Montreal almost three years ago. She scoured help wanted ads, retrained as a food service worker, participated in job training and landed a position as a cook that pays $18.20 an hour.
But the 53-year-old single mother of three teens can’t get enough hours to make her pay count. As a result, she still relies on welfare to help cover her monthly costs, which include $1,350 in rent for her three-bedroom Scarborough apartment.
“I’m earning a good wage,” says Bucknor, who works 16 hours a week cooking breakfast at a downtown men’s hostel. “I just need the fulltime hours. I don’t want to be on assistance.”
She dreams of saving to buy a house or condo “and start building a life.”
“I hate giving my money away in rent every month,” she says. “But right now, I’m living hand to mouth. Just keeping my head above water.”
Bucknor’s experience shows that it is not just minimum wage earners who are fuelling the growth in working poverty. The 50-per-cent increase in temporary, contract and part-time positions in the Toronto and Hamilton regions since 2000 are also to blame, says a new report.
The increasing scarcity of affordable housing in Toronto is pushing the working poor further outside the urban core, where many servicesector jobs are located, adding grueling commutes to their daily struggles, the report notes.
When Bucknor started her job last summer, she had to leave her Scarborough apartment at 3:30 am and take four buses to get downtown in time to work the 5 am breakfast shift.
So she jumped at the chance to buy a 12-year-old van for $3,000. But her car loan adds another $200 to her monthly expenses.
“The car has taken a lot of my money, but it gives me great satisfaction, so I persevere,” Bucknor says. “I can drive to church and especially in this cold winter I have been so happy I can drive to work.” Laurie Monsebraaten
When you ask for a raise, they say: ‘There’s the door.’