Every week the government publication BC Stats Infoline publishes a summary of usually pretty interesting things going on in British Columbia. They have a nice archive of these publications and it can be helpful to go back and look at earlier publications.
I looked at January 2001, the last year of the NDP government, and January this year for the beginning of the tenth year the Liberal government has been in office, for the subject of average weekly wages and found the following.
| 2001 | 2011 | |
| BC | $643.16 | $819.14 |
| Canada | $622.49 | $830.22 |
Ten years ago average weekly wages in BC were about three per cent higher than the average for Canada. Now we have fallen to about 1.3% lower than the Canadian average. Average weekly wages went up by $176 in BC and up by $208 in the rest of the country.
This can’t be blamed on the recession. The whole country went through the recession and BC was hit less hard than a province like Ontario with its big manufacturing sector.
This is just one more thing to put into the mix when we are thinking about how well we have been managed economically for the last decade. Apparently, everyone else has a little more money in their pockets than we do.
The Olive Ridley Crawl // Jan 21, 2011 at 1:39 pm
Hi:
This is a good point, one that the media will probably not catch on to, because they are hard wired to think that the NDP was, and continues to be a failure.
Is that a typo in the table? The year in column 3 is 2003, though you talk about it in the blog as 2010.
Thanks.
Keith Reynolds // Jan 21, 2011 at 5:40 pm
Typo corrected. Many thanks for drawing it to my attention. I put it down to the fact I got new glasses today.
BC Liberals – Economic managers par excellence… | The Exile // Jan 22, 2011 at 9:21 am
[...] …or so they proclaim, despite the statistics not bearing that narrative out. Here is more gist for the mill: Ten years ago average weekly wages in BC were about three per cent higher than the average for [...]
Tweets that mention Over a decade, average BC wages fall below Canadian average | CCPA Policy Note -- Topsy.com // Jan 22, 2011 at 6:03 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Sara Goldvine, Marie Della Mattia. Marie Della Mattia said: Kevin Falcon and his endorsers must be incredibly pleased with the Liberal decade of lowering wages. Are you? http://bit.ly/fGZUV9 #bcpoli [...]