If we think about wage growth from 1999 to today, I would argue that wage growth has actually been very subdued. In fact, it's been relatively subdued for most workers. If we think about it in terms of high-skilled occupations, wage growth between 1999 and 2010 averaged a gain of 3.2%. Now remember, inflation was basically around 2%, so you're only talking about a 1% wage growth.
Middle-skilled jobs over that same timeframe increased only 2.6%. So strip off inflation and you're talking about something very close to zero. Then for low-skilled jobs we've had a 3.4% increase. Actually, low-skilled jobs had the highest percentage increase, but I'd argue that the issue is the level of income—3.4% only takes you up to $15,200. It's not an issue about wage growth. A lot of that growth came from increases in minimum wages in various provinces. The bottom line here is that wage growth actually has been very subdued.