Beginning January 1, 2022, the Ontario minimum wage increased to $15 an hour from $14.35. Students under 18, home and hospitality workers, hunting and fishing guides all saw an increase in their wages.
Servers and bartenders saw an even larger increase from the previous $12.55.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford said a full-time minimum wage worker will see a raise of $1,350 a year, affecting more than 760,000 Ontarian’s.
The rise in wages has begged the question of how it affects the economy. Not to mention, how it affects those within the community.
Jessica Ladd, a 17-year-old high school student from St. Thomas, Ont., says she’s happy about the increase in her paychecks.
“As a 17 year old teenager who is not in college yet, it’s great,” Ladd explains. “I pay for my phone bill, but I don’t have a large amount of bills to pay for. I haven’t had a negative effect from it.”
However, this is not the case for all students. 17-year-old Will Simon expresses his frustrations with the wage increase.
“I was recently promoted closer to the end of last year,” says Simon. “Now that I got that, everyone else is getting a similar raise as well. But at the same time, I now have all of these duties that none of those other people have, which means we’re still getting paid at a similar rate, but I have more responsibilities than before.”
Darren Chapman is an economics professor at Fanshawe College. He says this is “not as simple as saying who benefits and who loses.”
“Producers who have their own business would look at a rise in minimum wages as a negative, affecting expenses and overall profit. On the other hand, a consumer may or may not necessarily benefit from this. They might be cut on hours and be pressured to work harder and be more productive”
But Chapman explains why he’s in favour of the wage increase.
“I think that we have to have a wage increase,” says Chapman. “I think the overall benefit is that after you squeeze the worker to get ‘X’ amount of work out of them, there’s only so far you can squeeze to get the extra productivity out. Which means that eventually, producers are going to have to pay a higher wage.”
“Paying a higher wage is going to benefit the lower end earner which, to me, is also benefiting all of society.”
However, Dan Kelly, President and CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, criticized the Premiers decision to raise the minimum wage on Twitter, saying that it will hurt struggling businesses.
7. CFIB's major concern is the timing of this policy. Employers will see 2 min wage hikes within 3 months – 1 of which was unplanned and a surprise for their 2022 budgets. To date, there is no offsetting financial support to pay for this hike.
— Dan Kelly (@CFIB) November 2, 2021
As of now, only 37 per cent of Ontario small businesses are back to normal sale levels from the pandemic.
But how has the wage increase affected you? Or has it affected you at all? For more information about the Ontario minimum wage increase, click here.
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