Living wage rate in Hamilton climbs to $17.20 per hour

The living wage rate in Hamilton has been updated for the first time since 2019 to reflect how the cost of living has continued to climb.

According to the Ontario Living Wage Network, Hamilton’s living wage is now sitting at $17.20 per hour, up from an hourly rate of $16.45 two years ago.

The network calculates the rate based on major expenses like rent, transportation, child care and food, as well as things like internet service and ‘modest’ recreational activities.

“New supports for families with children meant that living wage calculations were coming back with reductions over the 2019 rates,” the agency said in a media release on Monday.

“Yet we all know the cost of living has not gone down. Inflation has quadrupled since the beginning of 2019 and is at an 18-year high.”

This year’s calculations take into account a weighted average between a family of four, a single parent with one child, and a single adult.

“It’s very much an evidence-based calculation on what workers need to earn,” said Tom Cooper, director of the Hamilton Roundtable For Poverty Reduction.

“The minimum wage, on the other hand, doesn’t take any of that a consideration.”

On Oct. 1, Ontario’s minimum wage rose to $14.35 per hour, but Cooper said that it “comes nowhere close to meeting what workers need to earn” to live and participate in the community, especially in different parts of the province.

“It isn’t reflective of the fact that it’s more expensive to live in Hamilton than it might be, say, somewhere like Windsor. But the living wage does change from community to community as the cost of living increases.”

The Ontario Living Wage Network has a list of the 32 local employers that have signed on to pay their staff a living wage, with the most recent being FirstOntario Credit Union.

Cooper said they’re also hoping to encourage the city of Hamilton to pay all of its workers a living wage — including seasonal employees like students.

“To their credit, they’ve gone partway there,” he said. “All of the full-time and part-time workers at the city are now earning a living wage, with the exception of student positions. So we think students need to earn a living wage too. There are extraordinary costs associated with education … with increasing housing prices and food prices.”

The call to pay employees a living wage is also being extended to Hamilton’s postsecondary institutions and hospitals.

Currently, Zumper.com reports the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Hamilton is $1,449, which is a 13 per cent increase compared with the previous year.

A recent research study from Oxford Economics also found that Hamilton is the fifth-least affordable North American city in which to buy a home, with Vancouver and Toronto as the only other Canadian municipalities considered more expensive.

Here are the Ontario Living Wage Network’s 2021 living wage rates for 23 Ontario municipalities, including Peel Region, which was newly added to the list as of this year: