It now takes about $30 an hour to live in Halifax. Nova Scotia’s minimum wage is $17, and roughly half the province’s workers earn less than what a living wage requires.
That is the finding of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, whose Atlantic director, Christine Saulnier, put it plainly: “If you are not earning this conservative estimate of what it takes, then really, truly, you’re struggling.” The living wage is $28 an hour in northern Nova Scotia, up nearly 10%. The Nova Scotia Federation of Labour says the gap between the minimum wage and the living wage has doubled since 2018.
For African Nova Scotians, this lands on a base that was already lower. The African Nova Scotian Prosperity and Well-being Index, released in May 2024, found an average after-tax income gap of $8,960 for Black men compared with all men in the province. Third-generation Black Nova Scotians, whose families have been here the longest, had the lowest average after-tax income of any group in the index: $32,760 in 2020.
Housing shows what that gap buys. According to 2021 census data cited in the index, 17.2% of Black Nova Scotians lived in unaffordable housing, meaning they spent 30% or more of their income on shelter. For the province overall it was 12.1%. The Black population is 28,220 people, about 3% of Nova Scotia, and it grew between 2016 and 2021 mainly through immigration, with Nigeria leading.
There is a hole in the numbers. The policy centre’s analysis says half of workers fall below the living wage, and that women are overrepresented among them. It does not break the figure down by race. The published figures do not say how many of those workers are Black. The 2024 index is the closest thing to a count, and it measures income, not hourly pay.
Nova Scotia’s minimum wage went up 25 cents, to $17, on Oct. 1. Melissa Marsman, president of the federation, says the province should bring unions, employers and advocates together to build a framework that gets every worker to a living wage. The policy centre goes further, calling for a minimum wage of $20 an hour, raised each year by inflation plus 1%.
Both are the right ask, and the province should add a third: collect pay data by race, so that the next living wage report can say how many Black workers sit in the gap. Until it does, the province is setting wages for people it has not counted.
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