Minimum Wage Increase Could Lose 60,000 Canadian Jobs by 2018

The Bank of Canada published a new report regarding its projection for the Canadian economy. It further shows that Canada is expected to drop off 60,000 jobs this year upon the increase of minimum wage levels throughout the country.

The Ottawa-based central bank issued a report that could assess the impact of the higher minimum wage of a country towards the global economy. On January 1, Ontario, known to have the highest population in Canada, boost its minimum wage from  $11.60 to  $14. Moreover, other regions including Alberta, Prince Edward Island, and Quebec are predicted to raise its minimum amount of remuneration by the end of 2018.

Most of the economists have been arguing about the possible effect of such increase towards the economy of Canada. Few of them believes that higher pay wages could definitely give a breakthrough for the country and some of them assume that the cost will increase as well and employers would likely scale back on laborers which could end up the labor market in chaos.

According to the economic models employed by the central bank, the economy is estimated to lose 60,000 jobs in the end of the year because of the minimum wage hike. While the worst case scenario constructed by the BoC is the possible decline of jobs by 136,000 in 2018 since employers are required to compensate their workers for a higher hourly rate.