OTTAWA - Canadians' average incomes changed little in 2008 from the year before after four years of growth, Statistics Canada reported Thursday.
The federal agency found that the median after-tax income for families with two or more people was $63,900 that year, virtually unchanged from 2007. After-tax income also remained unchanged among singles, at $24,900.
The data from 2008 is the most recent available and does not include much of the aftermath from the financial crisis that struck the economy in October of that year. Canada's unemployment rate has risen since then.
Provincially, after-tax income for families rose 5.7 per cent in both Saskatchewan and British Columbia in 2008. After-tax income for families was highest in Alberta at $77,200.
Singles' after-tax income increased 13 per cent in Alberta and 12 per cent in Manitoba, while it was virtually unchanged in the other provinces.
Families also paid the same level of income taxes, a median of $8,800, as they did the year before.
The 20 per cent of Canadians with the highest family after-tax income had about 5.4 times the income as those in the lowest 20 per cent, a ratio that was virtually unchanged from 2000, Statistics Canada said.
Nearly one-in-ten, or three million Canadians were living on low-incomes in 2008, which was also unchanged from 2007.
About 606,000 children aged 17 and under lived in low-income families in 2008, again unchanged from the year before, but below the 854,000 reported in 2003. About one-third of children in low-income families lived with a single mother.
That proportion also halved the peak 18 per cent of children living in low-income families recorded in 1996.
The Statistics Canada data is based on the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics, which was conducted in all provinces and surveyed about 34,000 families.
