Canadian Salaries Have Stopped Making Sense

Nellie* knew that when she chose a career in the arts, she likely wouldn’t have the secure, comfortable life of her parents. The 31-year-old Calgarian makes $52,000 a year in an administrative role at a theatre company. For the past three years, she has taken on a slew of side jobs — from box office and ushering work to stage management — because her salary leaves little room to save. Nellie and her husband, who earns $80,000 in banking, have spent much of their adult life together dealing with the stress of rental instability in Calgary, from being displaced three times to having their rent suddenly jump from $1,200 to $1,800.

Nellie’s parents had a very different experience. She grew up in a four-bedroom detached house they bought in 2000 for $200,000. Her father, the family’s sole breadwinner, was earning $85,000 at the time working for a major airline, eventually topping out at $200,000. Nellie doubts she will ever come close to that income level. Even as an executive director, the top of her field, she figures she might make $75,000. Last year, however, Nellie and her husband bought a $370,000 townhouse, a milestone she once doubted they would ever reach. But they needed significant help from her parents for the down payment. Without it, Nellie estimates homeownership would have been another decade away, if it happened at all.

She expects to keep working multiple jobs, with 60-hour weeks becoming her new norm. She jokes that the old adage about doing something you love and never working a day in your life works a little differently in the arts: “Do something you love and you may never take a day off,” she laughs.

Nellie is part of a group of Canadians who will never come close to matching what their parents made. Others featured in this story already have — and then some. Yet almost none of them feel like they've made it.