Last month, Statistics Canada released their latest data for inflation in the country.
As someone who does most of the grocery shopping in our home and has noticed the large increases in some grocery prices since the start of the pandemic, I was curious to see how grocery prices have increased in Alberta and how that compares to other provinces.
Here is how the consumer price index for food has changed for each province between July 2019 and July 2025.
| Jul 2019 | Jul 2025 | Change | % change | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PEI | 157.1 | 214.2 | 57.1 | 36.35% |
| NB | 157.2 | 211.9 | 54.7 | 34.80% |
| NS | 152.9 | 204.6 | 51.7 | 33.81% |
| AB | 146.8 | 195.0 | 48.2 | 32.83% |
| NL | 146.7 | 194.4 | 47.7 | 32.52% |
| MB | 146.2 | 191.4 | 45.2 | 30.92% |
| SK | 147.8 | 192.6 | 44.8 | 30.31% |
| BC | 145.5 | 189.5 | 44.0 | 30.24% |
| ON | 152.7 | 197.3 | 44.6 | 29.21% |
| QC | 147.3 | 190.1 | 42.8 | 29.06% |
We can see that Alberta saw the fourth largest increase—and the largest increase outside Atlantic Canada—during this period, with the price of food purchased from stores increasing 32.83%.
Plus, if you look at just the July 2025 column, you can see that Alberta had the fifth highest number overall, which means that it has seen the 5th largest food price increase since 2002, which is when CSI was indexed to 100.
But then I thought, “Well, Alberta is supposed to have super high wages. Maybe wages have increased to help offset the jump in food prices”.
Here is a table of median hourly wages for each province, and how much they have changed during the same period.
Median wages differ from average wages in that rather than having the average of all the wages (which can be distorted by super high wages for just a few people), it shows the middle wage, or the wage where half of the wages in the data are above it and half of the wages are below it.
| Jul 2019 | Jul 2025 | Change | % change | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NS | $20.00 | $27.00 | $7.00 | 35.00% |
| PEI | $18.75 | $25.00 | $6.25 | 33.33% |
| QC | $23.00 | $30.00 | $7.00 | 30.43% |
| NB | $20.00 | $26.00 | $6.00 | 30.00% |
| BC | $24.73 | $31.90 | $7.17 | 28.99% |
| ON | $24.04 | $30.77 | $6.73 | 28.00% |
| NL | $21.98 | $27.00 | $5.02 | 22.84% |
| MB | $21.52 | $26.38 | $4.86 | 22.58% |
| AB | $27.00 | $32.00 | $5.00 | 18.52% |
| SK | $24.00 | $28.00 | $4.00 | 16.67% |
This time we saw that Alberta had the third smallest increase in median hourly wages among all the provinces, but the second smallest increase relative to what wages were in July 2019.
Two provinces—Alberta and Saskatchewan—saw increases to median hourly wages of less than 20%. Every other province increases by over 20% , and half of those had wage increases of over 30%.
Now, let us compare the difference in change between food price increase and wage increases.
| Food increase | Wage increase | Gap | |
|---|---|---|---|
| AB | 32.83% | 18.52% | 14.32% |
| SK | 30.31% | 16.67% | 13.64% |
| NL | 32.52% | 22.84% | 9.68% |
| MB | 30.92% | 22.58% | 8.33% |
| NB | 34.80% | 30.00% | 4.80% |
| PEI | 36.35% | 33.33% | 3.01% |
| BC | 30.24% | 28.99% | 1.25% |
| ON | 29.21% | 28.00% | 1.21% |
| NS | 33.81% | 35.00% | -1.19% |
| QC | 29.06% | 30.43% | -1.38% |
Alberta had the highest gap—14.32%—between the increase in food prices and the increase to wages. Saskatchewan was the only other province with a gap of over 10%.
Two provinces—Nova Scotia and Québec—were the only ones whose median wages increased faster than their food prices.
