The idea that Canada’s cost-of-living crisis “may be just a perception crisis” or the result of excessive exposure to social media, as argued recently in The Globe and Mail, minimizes the real financial pressures many people face, from rising rents to higher grocery bills.

Framing the issue as one of mindset obscures the structural challenges such as wage stagnation, precarious employment and growing housing unaffordability – turning systemic issues into personal failings.

While headline data show average after-tax incomes have risen faster than inflation over the past decade, averages obscure what has actually changed. For a growing number of Canadians, work has become more unequal, more insecure and less reliably connected to a stable standard of living.

Wages, work and widening inequality

Take wages. While overall employment has remained relatively stable, median wage growth has trailed average wage growth for much of the past decade, pushing the gap between the country’s highest- and lowest-income households to an all-time high in 2025, Statistics Canada says.

Top-income households have seen substantially stronger income growth than those in the middle and at the bottom, widening the gap between those who feel protected from rising costs and those who do not. For some 20 years, Statistics Canada data show median wages grew slower than consumer prices broadly, resulting in reduced real purchasing power.

This inequality is compounded by the changing nature of work. Precarious employment – temporary, involuntary part-time, gig and platform-based jobs – has become a permanent feature of the labour market.

This is the standard employment relationship for roughly one in five workers, a share that is much higher among younger workers, women, immigrants and racialized Canadians. These positions typically offer lower wages,........

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