Kamloops' living wage pegged at $17.95 an hour

By Andrea Klassen - Kamloops This Week
Published: July 28, 2012 2:00 PM

Kamloops' living wage is keeping up with inflation.

The latest calculations from the Changing Face of Poverty committee peg Kamloops' living wage at $17.95 an hour, up from $17.30 in 2011.

The wage is calculated based on the expenses of a family of four with two young children and two parents working 35 hours a week each and includes government transfers and deductions such as EI premiums.

While this year's wage is up 65 cents from last year, Jeff Hicks, a research assistant with the Kamloops Homelessness Action Plan, said much of that change is due to some adjustments to the calculation that bring it more in line with similar calculations done across the province.

Without the calculation changes, the real difference in this year's living wage is about two per cent, just slightly under the rate of inflation.

The Kamloops wage is lower than several other calculations.

Vancouver's living wage for 2012 was $19.16, Victoria's $18.07.

"It represents the lower cost of living and that would be expected, especially given shelter costs are much higher in Vancouver," said Hicks.

However, the measure of a community's health isn't how high or low its living wage is, he said, but "whether people's incomes match the expenses they face."

That number wasn't calculated for Kamloops last year, when the committee released its first living wage numbers.

But, it will come in the next couple weeks, once Hicks crunches income data from Statistics Canada.

"We'll be doing some comparisons of that, as to how many people roughly are below this household income that you require to meet the basic level of expenses," he said.

While other living-wage proponents have in the past pushed for the City of Kamloops to adopt a living-wage policy, Hick said the committee's calculations are more about raising awareness.

"We give this information to the community, but we're not pushing for a municipal ordinance, we're not pushing for an official campaign," he said.

Instead, employers may look at the data as they make choices about how to run their workplaces.

"This kind of information can factor into people's decisions in many different ways beyond wage conditions, whether it's simply being more lenient with their days off or making the work environment more family-friendly," he said.

"There's all sorts of decisions that having this information in the back of your mind could change the outlook of."

One key difference for the Kamloops area, compared to Vancouver, is that single parent families can get by on a far lower wage than their two-parent counterparts.

Here, the single-parent living wage is $13.59. In Vancouver, the standard living wage isn't considered enough money to support a single parent and children. 

What the living wage  includes:

Food, rent, a $40 phone plan, one car and a BC Transit bus pass, child care and up to $1,500 in non-MSP health care per year.

What it doesn't cover:
College funds for the kids, saving for home ownership, payments for any student loan debt.