The Okanagan, one of the country’s most popular retirement destinations, unsurprisingly skews older than the rest of Canada.
According to census information released Tuesday, the average age in the Okanagan’s largest centres is around 45 years old, which is older than the national average age of 41.9 years old.
Of all the cities, the oldest is Penticton, with an average age of 48.9 years. Vernon, where the average age is 47.2 years, is the second-oldest.
The Central Okanagan is a bit younger, with the average age for a Kelowna resident being 43.2 years old, while West Kelowna’s average age is 43.3. Lake Country is the closest to the national figure and has an average age of 42.8 years old.
The high average age likely has something to do with the fact that the Okanagan has always been a retirement destination, placing the proportion of seniors in each of these cities — people who are more than 65 years old — higher than the national average.
Canadawide, the percentage of the population that is 65 years and older is 19 per cent, a jump of more than two percentage points from the 2016 census.
In Kelowna, where the population in 2021 was 144,575, there are 31,000 people over the age of 65, or 21 per cent of the population. In West Kelowna the proportion of seniors is 21 per cent of the total population, in Vernon it’s 28 per cent, in Penticton it’s 30 per cent and in Lake Country it’s 18 per cent.
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This has some implications, Statistics Canada warned in its report.
“Population aging shifts the balance of services needed in some areas of the country and puts additional pressure on a number of sectors, including health care and labour,” reads the report.
The 2021 census also showed that for the first time since the end of the baby boom, baby boomers —who were born between 1946 and 1965 and were between the ages of 56 and 75 in 2021 — make up less than a quarter of the Canadian population. They represent 24.9 per cent of the Canadian population, compared with 41.7 per cent in 1966, when they were under the age of 20.
They are a slightly higher proportion of the Okanagan’s population.
In Kelowna, 36,300 of the 144,575 people were born in the baby boom, or 25 per cent. In West Kelowna, it’s 27 per cent of the population, and in Lake Country it’s 29.5 per cent of the population.
In Vernon, boomers account for 29.8 per cent of the population and in West Kelowna 27 per cent of the population were born during the baby boom, while 29 per cent of Lake Country residents were born in the baby boom. In Penticton, boomers account for 31.6 per cent of the population.
“The working-age population, persons aged 15 to 64 who produce the bulk of goods and services in the Canadian economy, has reached a turning point,” reads the report.
“Never before has the number of people nearing retirement been so high. More than 1 in 5 (21.8 per cent) persons of working age are aged 55 to 64. This is an all-time high in the history of Canadian censuses and one of the factors behind the labour shortages facing some industries across the country. The aging of many baby boom cohorts—the youngest of whom are between 56 and 64 years today—is accelerating population aging in general.”