Some of the income gaps between the most and least advantaged in Canada are wide and growing ever wider, according to the census data released Thursday by Statistics Canada.
Between 1980 and 2005, the full-time income of the bottom 20 percent of the income pyramid, fell by 20.6 percent, after adjusting for inflation. The median income for this low-income group dropped from 19,367 Canadian dollars (1 U.S. dollar equals about 1.21 Canadian dollars in 2005) in 1980 to 15,375 Canadian dollars in 2005.
For the lowest-earning families, the median income fell 9.1 percent over the 25-year period to 14,176 Canadian dollars.
"Earnings for this group have fallen steadily since 1980," Statistics Canada noted.
Those in the middle 20 percent income group saw their earnings stagnate. Statistics Canada said this group's median full-time income was 41,348 Canadian dollars in 1980. In 2005, that figure was just 53 Canadian dollars a year higher -- a net gain of a buck a week.
The richest group -- the top 20 percent of income earners - saw their median incomes rise by 16.4 percent to 86,253 Canadian dollars, after taking inflation into account.
The faster income growth of Canada's richest meant a big increase in the number of those earning at least 100,000 Canadian dollars a year. In 1980, 3.4 percent of full-timers reached that earnings plateau. By 2005, that high-earning club was a lot more crowded, as 6.5 percent of earners were in that category: more than 600,000 people.
The census figures also show that younger workers were earning less in 2005 than their parents did a generation earlier. That was especially true for young men.
For the group aged 25-29, Statistics Canada paints a picture of falling fortunes. The median earnings of young men tumbled from 43,767 Canadian dollars in 1980 to 37,680 Canadian dollars in 2005. For women of the same age, the median income fell by a much smaller 709 Canadian dollars in that period to 32,104 Canadian dollars.
But it is among recent immigrants that the growing income gap is most noticeable.
The figures show that recent immigrants -- those who arrived from 2000 to 2004 -- earned 85 cents for every dollar earned by Canadian-born workers in 1980. By 2005, the amount had shrunk to just 63 cents. Recent immigrant men with university degrees earned just 48 cents for every dollar earned by Canadians. In 1980, they earned 77 cents.
Statistics Canada lays part of the blame for the lost ground among the better-educated immigrants on recent job losses in the information and communication technologies sector. In 2005, the agency said half of all recent immigrant men with university educations had earned their degrees in either computer sciences or engineering. Only one in six Canadian-born grads had similar majors.
Source: Xinhua
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