Welfare doesn’t cut it. Minimum wage will soon, just barely.
September 21st, 2009 | Published in Economics idea
Most full time jobs are about 2,000 hours a year. Yesterday’s post showed that a single person living in a large city in Canada needed $20,778 a year. That’s over $10 per hour ($10/hour * 2,000 hours/year = $20,000 per year). Next year Ontario plans to increase it’s minimum wage to $10.25 per hour (from $9.50). That’s just enough to keep a single person above the poverty line so long as they work full time hours.
A family of 4 needs $38,610 per year. Nearly two full time incomes at the new minimum wage are needed to stay out of poverty. With the new minimum wage rates in Ontario, families have a chance to stay out of poverty. Both parents have to find steady full time jobs.
Welfare benefits are well below the poverty line. The Ontario Government website doesn’t give a figure because they claim the calculations are complicated. From what I could glean, a single person would end up with significantly less than $10,000 per year, less than half of the poverty line in big cities.
I don’t know if the Low Income Cut-off is the right measure of poverty. What is clear, though, is that poor people need more money.
