Since 2011, the Alberta government has been publishing the “Alberta minimum wage profile”, a summary of the demographic information regarding those whose average hourly earnings are at or below minimum wage.
Last summer, the government added the minimum wage profile for workers in 2023.
What we believe about the type of people who work minimum wage may not actually align with who these workers actually are.
For example, did you know that the vast majority of workers being paid minimum wage aren’t teenagers?
In fact, only 37.1% of minimum wage workers were between the age of 15 and 19 in 2023. If you include only those who are 15 through 17, it drops to just 18.5%, respectively. That means that nearly 4 out of every 5 minimum wage workers are older than high school age.
Actually, roughly 1 out of every 3 workers being paid minimum wage were 30 years old or older. Not only that, but roughly 1 in 10 were 55 years or older.
During the first two years of the UCP administration, the percentage of minimum wage workers who were under 20 years of age hit their lowest level since at least 2010.
And that means the opposite was also true: the proportion of minimum wage earners who are older than teenagers had reached its highest levels since 2010.
However, that trend reversed over the next 3 years, pushing up the share of teenage minimum wage earners above 30% again.
While people might be quick to point out that those minimum wage workers who are older than teenagers are probably mostly students, especially since 1 in 5 are between 20 and 24 years old, the report says that only about 34% were students. Nearly 3 in 4 workers being paid minimum wage are not students.
Another common belief is that minimum wage workers are mostly part-time. And that’s sort of true. 61.2% of all minimum wage workers were working part-time in 2023. That being said, there were still 38.8% who were working full time, which is still a significant proportion, roughly 2 out of 5 workers.
Related to that, 74.1% of minimum wage workers were working in a permanent job in 2023. Only 25.9% were in a temporary position. The majority of minimum wage workers (51.3%) had been working in their position for over a year, and about 1 in 7 had been in their job for over 5 years.
13.1% of minimum wage workers in Alberta were supporting children under the age of 18 at home.
Did you know that most workers who were being paid minimum wage had at least a high school diploma? Only 27.4% of minimum wage workers had never completed high school. As well, over a third (39%) had completed at least some post-secondary education, with 72.1% of those having received a certificate, diploma, or degree.
Unsurprisingly, most of the workers being paid minimum wage were in either the retail sector or the accommodation and food services sector. Combined, these two sectors accounted for 61.9% of all minimum wage workers.
The majority of the minimum wage workers were not a visible minority (59.9%), were not Indigenous (92.9%), and were born in Canada (63%).
Finally, in 2022, Alberta had the highest percentage (tied with Nova Scotia at 7%) of workers who were earning minimum wage among all 10 provinces. In 2023, we dropped to 5th highest at 6%.
Keep in mind that Alberta was the only province that didn’t increase its minimum wage in 2023. If a province increases its minimum wage, it makes sense that a larger percentage of the workforce would be making minimum wage.
