Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Canada's Inequality

An analysis of five years of financial reports from 10 of Canada's largest companies, carried out for HuffPost Canada, found that CEOs made an average of 227 times the average employee working for that same company. Top executives, including the CEO, made on average 106 times more than the company's average employee.
Over the 2012-2016 period, the gap widened in six of 10 companies surveyed.
Between 2012 and 2016, Rogers Communications had the largest increase in the CEO pay gap by far, growing by 148 per cent to 305 times average pay in 2016, from 123 times average pay in 2012. This was largely because of a payout to its outgoing CEO, J. Guy Laurence, who took home $24.6 million in 2016, more than double what he took home the year before.
Loblaws had the second largest increase in its CEO pay gap, which increased by 42 per cent, growing its multiple to 285 in 2016 from 201 in 2012.
Not only is Canada's wage gap significantly more than expected, but it's growing. This ratio has increased by 15 per cent for CEOs and eight per cent for top executives from 2012 to 2016. In 2012, CEOs and top executives made 197 times and 98 times the average employee working for their same company, respectively.
According to information gathered by the World Economic Forum, in 2010 Europe's richest 10 per cent owned 64 per cent of Europe's wealth, significantly more than in the 15th century where the richest 10 per cent owned 50 per cent of the wealth.
According to a 2015 study from the University of British Columbia, "Changes in Wage Inequality in Canada," wages grew faster for the top 10 per cent than for the rest of the country from 1997 to 2013. In contrast, wages for the remaining 90 per cent stayed stagnant until 2006, after which they made modest gains.


No comments: