[BRIEF NOTE] The rich get richer, the poor get poorer

[rfmcdonald]

"25 YEARS: 53 BUCKS," the banner headline for Michael Valpy's front-page story read.

The final data released from the 2006 census showed the median earnings of full-time Canadian workers had increased to $41,401 in 2005 from $41,348 in 1980 - only about $1 a week more, measured in constant dollars.

In British Columbia it was worse: Median earnings actually fell 11.3 per cent between 1980 and 2005, the steepest slide in the country and something Statscan officials were at a loss to explain.

In addition to income stagnation, the census data, as predicted, revealed the income gap between rich and poor is widening, young people entering the labour market are earning less than their parents did a generation ago and immigrant incomes are plummeting.

Over the quarter century of census data tracked by Statscan, the incomes of the richest Canadians increased by 16.4 per cent while incomes of the poorest fell by 20.6 per cent.

The data also showed a rise in the proportion of Canada's youngest children living below the poverty line, a factor attributed to the declining incomes of immigrants and young native-born men at the family formation stage of their lives.

[. . .]

Armine Yalnizyan, senior economist for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives who has studied income inequality for the past several years, said she was surprised by the continuing income decline for immigrants and young people "because in 2005 we're at almost the tail end of a decade of strong economic growth, the strongest we've seen in 40 years, low inflation, low interest rates, low unemployment, strong economic growth and people are worse off than they were in the 1980s and 1990s, which were recession plagued decades.

"You'd think that with a tight labour market that the opportunities would increase for young people under 35 and for newcomers. But that just doesn't seem to be the case."

The Toronto Star ("GTA middle class struggles") tackled the local situation, which seems aggravated by the fact that Toronto has an above-average proportion of immigrants who tend to end up more frequently marginalized than their Canadian-born peers. Past discussions of the "Three Torontos" are quite germane here.

Nowhere are these national trends more pronounced than in the Toronto area, home to the country's largest percentage of new immigrants.

As a result, median family incomes (the point at which half are higher and half are lower) in the Toronto area dropped between 2000 and 2005 while they rose across Ontario and the rest of the country.

"We are becoming a city of the servant class – who earn servant wages and live in the city's northern suburbs – and the downtown elite who run everything," said University of Toronto urban studies professor David Hulchanski.

"Immigrants who used to come to this country came for middle-income jobs in construction that were unionized and well paying. Today they can't find those jobs. They are locked out by unions or education we don't recognize, or lack of Canadian experience," he said. "So they clean our offices and hotels and universities, drive our taxis and cook our meals."

[. . .]

Recent immigrant men with employment income in 1980 earned 85 cents for each dollar earned by Canadian-born men. But by 2005, the ratio had dropped to 63 cents. It was even worse for recent immigrant women, whose corresponding earnings were 85 cents and 56 cents, respectively.

Harjot Mangat, a 35-year-old lawyer from India, completed an MBA from Leeds University Business School in England before immigrating to Toronto in 2004. But the only work he has been able to find is selling electronics. "Even though my MBA is recognized by U of T, I quickly realized without Canadian experience no one was interested in hiring me," he said.

When he switched tactics and earned a diploma as a certified immigration consultant, no one would hire him because they were worried he'd compete for business, Mangat said.

So now he's trying to put his MBA to work through a website www.help4immigrants.com. "It's not about whether you are white or brown," Mangat said. "It's about the haves and have-nots. The haves don't want to let you in."

[. . .]

Across the Toronto area, median family incomes dropped to $77,693 in 2005 from $75,829 in 2000. The 2.4 per cent decrease compares with a national increase of 3.7 per cent and a provincial increase of 1.4 per cent.