Here we go again....
Trevor Tombe: The ‘Great Canadian Slump’ is back
Weekly earnings have increased only 1.6 percent between 2015 and 2024, or less than 0.2 percent per year
Canada’s lagging economic and productivity performance is no secret. Various articles in
The Hub have highlighted it,
most recently one by Sean Speer and Taylor Jackson. “At the heart of Canada’s economic malaise,” they correctly noted, “is low productivity growth.”
And last week, Bank of Canada Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn Rogers
echoed this sentiment. In uncharacteristically strong language for a central banker, she said Canada’s “long-standing, poor record on productivity” is “an emergency” and that “it’s time to break the glass.” (It’s a really good speech;
read it, I’ll wait.)
These are not exaggerations. Labour productivity has grown by 0.2 percent annually, on average, between early 2015 and the end of 2023. That’s the slowest growth over an eight-year period ever recorded. (At least since comparable data started in 1946.
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But this can be a difficult economic statistic for many to understand and, therefore, easy for political leaders to ignore.
So I want to draw attention to something much more concrete: income.
How much our jobs pay—and what’s left after taxes and inflation to buy the items we need—affects us daily. And, unfortunately, income growth has stalled to rates rarely seen in Canadian history. Only twice in the past century have we lived through more sluggish growth than today—both during serious recessions.
Let’s start with pay.
University of Waterloo economist Mikal Skuterud recently
estimated that earnings growth has been flat for many years. After adjusting for inflation, he finds average weekly earnings have increased only 1.6 percent between January 2015 and January 2024, or less than 0.2 percent per year.
This isn’t because Canadians are working fewer hours or taking pay in other forms (say, with improved benefits). We see this in a broader measure of total hourly labour compensation. Since the end of 2015,
total compensation per hour (adjusted for inflation) has grown by only 1.9 percent. That’s 1.9 percent over the entire period from 2015 (Q1) to 2023 (Q4), which works out to 0.2 percent per year, just as Mikal found for weekly earnings.
And, as I illustrate below, it’s a massive drop from a growth rate of more than 1.5 percent per year that Canadian workers saw over the previous two decades. It’s also clear here why productivity matters: it drives growth in our earnings.
Unfortunately, income growth has stalled to rates rarely seen in Canadian history. Only twice in the past century have we lived through more sluggish growth than today—both during serious recessions.
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