With poverty in Alberta on the rise and many Albertans struggling on low-incomes, advocates called on the government to increase the minimum wage in the province.
New statistics that were presented to the Alberta government committee reviewing the minimum wage policy show that 13.7 per cent of all employed Albertans earn less than $12 per hour, while 6.9 per cent make less than $10 per hour. This means that close to 240,000 Albertan employees are working for less than $12 per hour.
According to Bill Moore-Killgannon, executive director of Public Interest Alberta, a big concern is not only the number of people earning low-incomes, but also the demographics.
Fifty-seven per cent of people earning less than $10 per hour are over 20 years old.
“These are not just people like my teenage boys trying to earn a few extra dollars,” Moore-Killgannon said. “These are young families who are trying to pay the rent and feed their kids.”
According to the statistics, a 62 per cent majority of the low-income earners are women, many of them single moms.
“If someone is working full-time, they shouldn’t be living in poverty,” he said. “We were shocked when the government just announced all of a sudden that they weren’t going to increase the minimum wage.”
