Toronto·NewOntario’s minimum wage will increase from $17.20 to $17.60 an hour in October but experts say employers should be striving to provide a livable wage above that increase.The provincial minimum wage increases to $17.60 an hour on Oct. 1Tyler Cheese · CBC News · Posted: Sep 14, 2025 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 30 minutes agoOntario’s minimum wage will increase by 40 cents in October, providing a pay bump of $835 a year for minimum wage workers that work 40 hours per week. (Peter Scobie/CBC)Minimum wage workers all over the province will get a pay bump next month.Ontario’s minimum wage is set to increase from $17.20 to $17.60 an hour, starting Oct. 1.The adjustment amounts to an annual pay increase of $835 for minimum wage workers who work 40 hours per week, according to the province. But Craig Pickthorne, director of communications for the Ontario Living Wage Network (OLWN), told CBC Toronto that’s still not enough.”There is simply no place in the province where you can work full-time at a minimum wage job even after the increase,” he said.Craig Pickthorne, director of communications for the Ontario Livable Wage Network, says the province has only considered a fraction of the costs Ontario residents actually pay. (Submitted by Craig Pickthorne)The provincial government determines the annual minimum wage increase based on the Ontario Consumer Price Index (CPI). This year’s is a 2.4 per cent bump and makes Ontario’s minimum wage the second highest provincial rate in Canada after British Columbia’s, which jumped to $17.85 per hour in June. In a news release this spring, the government explained it uses the CPI because it’s “a measure of inflation that represents changes in prices experienced by Ontario consumers.”But the CPI only measures a fraction of the costs Ontario residents actually pay, Pickthorne said.”They’re using one statistical tool to inform what is largely a political decision,” he said. “So what they’re not considering is all the real costs that people have to deal with, including shelter costs.” Every year, OLWN calculates a living wage for 10 regions across the province, considering factors like housing, food, transportation and childcare.Living wage in the GTA is $26 an hour: advocacy groupLast year, the network determined $26 was the hourly wage a worker must earn in order to make ends meet while living in the GTA. That was a 3.8 per cent increase from $25.05 in 2023. Data for this year was collected over the summer and will be released in November, Pickthorne said. Viet Vu – manager of economic research at Toronto Metropolitan University’s public policy think tank, The Dais – told CBC Toronto for most workers, this year’s increase will amount to only a modest difference on their paycheques.Viet Vu, manager of economic research at the Dais, a public policy think tank at Toronto Metropolitan University, says Ontario’s minimum wage has fallen behind. (Submitted by Viet Vu)”You’re only talking about 40 cents per hour, which you will have to pay tax on parts of,” he said. “It is going to be a nice reprieve [but] it’s nowhere near enough.”There are two major factors that have caused Ontario’s minimum wage to fall behind where it should be, Vu said. The first is the high inflation on most goods in 2023.The second is that during the pandemic, wages for Canada’s lowest-earning workers didn’t increase above inflation like they did in many other places, including the U.S. That’s due to many factors, including a high number of temporary foreign workers allowed in by the federal government, he said.”If you only look at the inflation rate this year, this increase is certainly proportionate,” Vu said. “But because of those two factors, [there] is an argument perhaps that a slightly faster catch up is required.”Minimum wage jobs held by ‘workers of all stripes’Meanwhile, Pickthorne points out a wide range of people, mostly from underprivileged groups, work minimum wage jobs. “Black workers are overrepresented in the ranks of minimum wage, as are women and newcomers,” he said. “It’s not teenagers living with their parents with paper routes. It is workers of all stripes.”OLWN has certified more than 640 Ontario employers offering employees a paycheque that matches its living wage calculations, and says employers benefit too.”They have lower turnover costs, they have lower costs related to training and recruitment,” Pickthorne said. “They have better productivity. Their employees no longer have to hold down multiple jobs. They don’t have to enter the gig economy and there’s spare time.” For those reasons, he’s urging other companies to do the same.ABOUT THE AUTHORTyler Cheese reports on local and provincial news in Toronto and the GTA. You can contact him at tyler.cheese@cbc.ca or @TylerRCheese on X.
Ontario’s minimum wage will increase next month, but experts say it’s still not enough
