Ontario’s New $15 Minimum Wage Will Hurt Young People

The biggest victims of a minimum wage hike are always young people. In Canada, 58.4% of workers earning minimum wage are in the fifteen-to-twenty-four age demographic. And besides, if you don’t want a minimum wage, build skills that are worth more to employers.

The Canadian province of Ontario is set to raise its minimum wage to fifteen dollars per hour by 2019, and this renewed the decades-long debate about the pros and cons of government mandated increases in pay for low-skill workers.

To figure out the effects of this particular minimum wage hike on poverty and the employment, it’s important to first establish the facts of Ontario’s situation.

The province’s current minimum hourly wage is $11.40, about $8.50 USD, similar to many American states that mandate workers be paid more than the current $7.25 federal minimum wage. Ontario’s minimum wage will increase to fourteen dollars per hour in 2018, then fifteen dollars in 2019—just under a thirty-two percent increase in all.

Ontario, with both Ottawa and Toronto within its borders, has the largest economy of any province in Canada, producing 39.4% of Canada’s total GDP. This translates to a strong average hourly wage for the province’s citizens of $26.43, just above the national average.