Living Wage and Minimum Wage

I posted the above meme on our conference Facebook page. The first comment made on that post disagreed and asserted that, "Most minimum wage earners could live without any pay because they are living with parents. The lowest paid work is meant for workers with the least work experience and skills, i.e. teenagers."

This is is a very common and popular assumption about who makes up the minimum wage workforce. It is repeated so often that it is no longer even questioned by a majority of people. While it is true that a large proportion of the minimum wage workforce is made up of teenagers, it is by no means a majority, as can be seen in the Labour Statistics Research Paper published by Statistics Canada in September 2019 - Maximum insights on minimum wage workers: 20 years of data. As can be seen in the graph below, the trend is in the opposite direction, with more and more older workers joining that workforce.

The percentage of workers aged 15 to 24 years making up the minimum wage workforce was 60.7% in 1998, 63.6% in 2008, 52.3% in 2018. Even if teenagers made up as much as half of that cohort, that would still only be 32% in 2008 and declining to 26% in 2018 - not even close to "most...".

Source: Statistics Canada, Labour Force Survey
See https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-004-m/75-004-m2019003-eng.htm

Canada Housing Benefit One-time Top-up

Canada Housing Benefit

One-time Top-up

The one-time top-up to the Canada Housing Benefit aims to help low-income renters with the cost of renting. You may be eligible for a tax-free one-time payment of $500 if your income and the amount that you pay on rent qualify.
The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) administers this one-time payment.

Applications are open until Friday, March 31, 2023.
https://www.canada.ca/en/services/taxes/child-and-family-benefits/top-up-canada-housing-benefit.html

Google search: Canada one time top up

Telephone: 1-800-282-8079 with:
• social insurance number (SIN)
• full name and date of birth
• complete address
• assessed tax return, notice of assessment or reassessment, other tax document

Lights shining in the world

 

River Jordan. Image credit https://faith.nd.edu/

Selection by Deacon Steve: Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

“Jesus rises from the waters; the world rises with him. The heavens like Paradise with its flaming sword, closed by Adam for himself and his descendants, are rent open. The Spirit comes to him as an equal, bearing witness to his Godhead. A voice bears witness to him from heaven, his place of origin. The Spirit descends in bodily form like the dove that so long ago announced the ending of the flood and so gives honour to the body that is one with God.

Today let us do honour to Christ’s baptism and celebrate this feast in holiness. Be cleansed entirely and continue to be cleansed. Nothing gives such pleasure to God as the conversion and the salvation of people, for whom God’s every word and every revelation exist. Our Lord wants you to become a living force for all humanity, lights shining in the world. You are to be radiant lights as you stand beside Christ, the great light, bathed in the glory of Christ who is the light of heaven. You are to enjoy more and more the pure light of the Trinity, as now you have received – though not in its fullness- a ray of its splendor, proceeding from the one God, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be power and glory forever and ever. Amen”

From the Second Reading- From a Sermon by Saint Gregory Nazianzus, bishop – Office of Readings, Liturgy of the Hours on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, p. 634- 635.