More Canadians joined the ranks of high-income earners with women making some gains.
Dark clouds of recession and budget adjustment loom over Canada.
The highest-paid Canadians had the biggest pay raises over the past decade, as the country’s economy swung wildly into a deep recession and into a commodities-led boom.
This has brought inequality earnings in Canada, where the top 20% among earners saw their wage increase 9% from 2005 to 2015 and the middle cohort saw an increment of 6% over the same period.
The rich became richest and the middle class just got some more money. Men still dominated and represented 77% of all 1 per centers richest.
As informed by StatsCan -the Government of Canada government agency commissioned with producing statistics-, the number of Canadians who made it into the top 1% rose by 2,420 to 270,925 in 2015, with the biggest gains in Ontario and British Columbia.
The areas with the most growth included Vancouver, Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, Hamilton and Toronto.
Meanwhile, the number of 1 per centers dropped in Alberta, as the oil collapse rocked the economy and led to thousands of job losses in the natural resources sector and beyond.
Wood Buffalo, the region that includes Fort McMurray, the heart of the oil sands, shouldered most of the declines. The number of 1 per centers fell to 3,130 in 2015 from 5,460 in the previous year.
The surge in oil prices during this decade vaulted more Canadians into the upper echelons of the income ladder.
Nowhere was this seen more than in Alberta, where the minimum amount required for men to be part of the 1% in Canmore was $568,852 and nearly half of the workers in the Fort McMurray/Wood Buffalo region earned at least CD$100,000.
What about taxes? The survey showed that, on average, high-income earners had a bigger tax burden.
Those in the 0.01 per cent cohort paid, on average, CD$2.6 million in federal and provincial or territorial taxes in 2015. The 0.1 per cent paid, on average, CD$736,800 in taxes. The 1 per centers paid, on average, CD$183,000 in taxes.
