Canadian wage growth holds steady at 3% as job-changers pocket bigger gains
What the sector breakdown shows
Wage growth was notably consistent across most industries, with little differentiation between goods-producing and service-providing sectors.
Among job-stayers, base pay rose 3.0% in natural resources and mining, construction, trade, transportation and utilities, information, financial activities, leisure and hospitality, and other services. Education and health services led the service-providing sectors at 3.3%, followed by professional and business services and manufacturing, both at 3.2%.
Wealth management professionals can draw on recent coverage of Canadian compensation trends on Wealth Professional to contextualise how these wage dynamics are affecting client households.
Regional differences worth watching
Provincial variation in base pay growth for job-stayers was limited but present.
Nova Scotia posted the strongest gain at 3.7%, followed by New Brunswick at 3.5% and Prince Edward Island at 4.2% – the only province to clear 4.0%. Yukon was the outlier on the low end, at 2.5%. Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Quebec all recorded base pay growth of exactly 3.0%.
