One of the major bits of information coming out of the new State of the North Report is the living wage projections for various towns across Northern BC, including Tumbler Ridge.
The site Living Wage for Families (www.livingwageforfamilies.ca) defines a living wage as “the hourly amount a family needs to cover basic expenses, which includes: food, clothing, rental housing, child care, transportation and basic savings to to cover illness or emergencies.”
The living wage calculation is based on a two-parent family with two children “the most common family unit in BC” and each parent working full-time.
That means if only one parent is working, the amount they need to be making to cover living expenses doubles.
The living wage for a family in Tumbler Ridge is $18.29, though NDIT admits that figure may not reflect reality after two years of Covid, and is based on what was a livable wage two years ago.
That places Tumbler Ridge in the middle of what people need to make to survive in various locations across the province. In the Lower Mainland for instance, where housing costs are extremely high, the living wage is $20.52.
Meanwhile, in Nanaimo, each working parent only needs to bring in $16.33 to survive.
Of course, this is just an average, and frequently one person in a household makes more than the livable wage, while the other person may make less.
In the Northeast, the average wage for a heavy equipment operator is $32, while a cashier may make only $15.20.
This does not factor in inflation, which has climbed 5.7 percent from February 2021 to February 2022.
This is the largest rise in inflation rates since August 1991, when the Consumer Price Index rose six percent.
Leading the charge was the cost for gasoline, which has climbed 32.3 percent over the last year.
At the grocery store, families should expect to pay about 7.4 percent more for groceries. Beef prices have climbed 16.8 percent and chicken was up 10.4 percent. Dairy and eggs are up 6.9 percent.
These steep increases are balanced somewhat compared to breads, which only increased an average of 3.7 percent in the last year.
And now is not a good time to be getting into the housing market, with prices increasing an average of 6.6 percent since last year, the largest jump since 1983.
One of the very few places where prices dropped was in telephone services, with an average drop of 7.9 percent year over year.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.