Evidence of meeting #25 for Status of Women in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was gap.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Is it in the same proportionality as we see for median? Is the average gap in the same proportionality as the median gap?
Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
It's different. I'd have to look at it in more detail, but for instance, the average wages and salary for men is about $50,000 versus $34,000 for women.
Liberal
Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
In both cases they're different.
You were asking about the difference between the median wages and salary versus median self employment income. It's a relative measure. Relatively, the difference is fairly close. One was slightly more than 40%, the other was about 45%.
Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
Yes. It looks big, but it's just because the relative numbers are different.
When I compare the difference on the average, the percentage difference between men and women is very similar; it's just that the numbers are different because of the scale.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Okay. So average numbers and median numbers on wages are relatively similar. Do I have that?
Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
Yes, in percentage terms they're slightly different. Based on that, it looks like there may be a few more men who have higher incomes. But I could pass along some information on the income distribution thing, because that's where the National Household Survey could really be drilled into to look at it in more detail and to see if there are differences.
But, again, one of the things one has to be careful with when looking at wages is that the labour market activity of women is often different from men, because until something changes, we're still child-bearing.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
The other observation you made is that women are more often unionized—
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
—than are men, and unions are there to protect wages. One would have thought, apples to apples, that there would be a closer relationship, by virtue of unionization, between men and women.
Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
Yes. That's where you'd have to go that next step further in analysis and look only at unionized work. But that gets away from, of course, the self-employed. We're again talking about the employees and looking at women versus men in the same job, with the same amount of experience, and the same type of employer.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
But the trend line would be interesting to see, if you will, whether the disproportionate unionization of female workers is contributing to the narrowing of the average/median wage gap.
Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
Yes, there are a lot of factors all in there—
Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
As you're pointing out, it's time to extricate those.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
I'm not on this committee, but I would have thought that's an interesting thing to find out.
Going to page 2, the participation rate of women has stabilized in recent years. If you go back to 2006, the gap seems to have been narrowing, and then it just seems to flatline, then falls parallel. Is there any particular reason for that?
Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
One thing to keep in mind with participation rate also is with the aging population. As people age, they come out of the labour market. We may be entering into a period where that is changing, but—
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
But, presumably, that would mean that fewer men are participating in employment. My generation would be the ones who would be coming out of the workforce.
Some of my constituents would like that happening sooner rather than later in my case.
Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
That's always one of the challenges in statistics, trying to understand what the difference is in participation rate. When it comes down to it, women are still the ones who go on maternity leave and have children, so that does impact some women's participation, and there are different choices for different groups. But the “why” is not something we tend to cover in our surveys.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
But it would be a reasonable projection that this participation rate that you've observed roughly over the last decade is going to maintain itself in percentage terms. This is as good or as bad, as the case may be, as it's going to get.