Racialized workers hit hardest by market downturn
By Lethbridge Herald on June 17, 2025.
Katherine Scott
Troy Media
Low-wage workers in Canada are facing growing job insecurity as the economy weakens. With affordability top of mind for many Canadians, the growing divide between high- and low-income earners is becoming harder to ignore. Racialized workers—those who are Indigenous, Black or other people of colour—make up a growing share of this group and are especially vulnerable.
The federal government can and must act to reduce the growing risks these workers face.
The signs are clear. Canada’s unemployment rate edged up in May, and economic uncertainty is starting to take a toll. We are already seeing declines in manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, sectors where more than half of low-wage workers are racialized.
Not long ago, the picture looked different. From spring 2022 to spring 2023, Canada’s employment rate reached record highs. The post-pandemic recovery allowed many workers to shift into higher-paying jobs, including racialized workers who had long been stuck at the bottom of the wage scale.
That window has closed. The divide between workers in low-wage sectors and those in higher-paying fields such as professional services is growing again.
This gap is particularly stark among racialized workers. As immigration to Canada increased sharply, racialized workers have driven employment growth both at the top and bottom of the labour market. But overall, there has been little wage progress for racialized workers aged 25 to 54. Gains in professional services and utilities have been offset by losses in construction, administrative support and similar sectors.
As more racialized workers enter low-wage jobs, the wage gap—both within that group and between racialized and white workers—is widening. In 2022, 13.1 per cent of racialized workers aged 25 to 54 held low-wage jobs, nearly twice the 7.1 per cent among comparable white workers. By 2024, that share had risen to 15.2 per cent for racialized workers, while the rate among white workers held steady at 7.3 per cent.
A persistent racial wage gap remains. In both 2022 and 2024, racialized workers earned 84.6 cents for every dollar earned by white workers. The gap is even greater for racialized women, who in 2024 earned, on average, 74.1 cents for every dollar earned by a white male worker, a difference of about $10 per hour.
With a potential recession looming and the cost of living still painfully high, low-wage workers risk falling further behind.
Canada is not ready. The federal government has not addressed the weaknesses in Employment Insurance that were exposed during the pandemic. Employment standards and regulations still leave many workers unprotected. Our health and social services are strained and underfunded. Immigrant settlement services are stretched thin, struggling to meet the needs of more than a million newcomers and temporary residents who have arrived in the past three years.
A bold, comprehensive response is urgently needed to tackle the racial disparities and structural inequities built into Canada’s labour market. As governments take on nation-building projects to meet this historic moment, they must ensure no one is left behind.
Katherine Scott is a senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and director of the CCPA’s gender equality and public policy work.
© Troy Media
15-14
while i agree the gap between haves and have nots is ever widening, i am more than a bit tired with the separating out of the masses into sub-groups. it is the majority of the masses always getting less; how one looks is far less the issue and should be far less the focus.
not having one’s working contributions fairly valued is a condition that affects all of us. to create a further divide among the hourly wage earning class is quite what the greed-monger power class loves to see. divide and rule is a time honoured manner of ensuring those at the very top, that uppermost 1% of the top 1%, always have more than a fair share.
is it not kind of gross and nasty to group everyone on the planet that are not seen to have “white” skin as “people of colour”? while prejudicial and racist, it also suggests those of a fairer tinted flesh have no colour. in fact, it suggests there are those of non-colour.
is that how we need it to be? people of every of our human skin colours set against people of non-colour? is such an approach not one of erasure of those of whitish flesh? does this not just recreate another other, only now it is those of non-colour that are cast into a negative light?
mind you, i see many folk “of colour” thriving, be they of bodies appearing as chinese, japanese, middle east (and, where does one place jewish folk on one’s color scheme? greek, spanish, italian…?) very often doing quite well relative to many of the non-coloured persuasion.
finally, to group humans into a this or that and us and them box, rather than as being equally worthy pieces of the collective whole, further compounds the divide and rule concept that keeps us worker ant folk in their place, under the thumbs of the greedy power brokers.
we had best get past creating and perpetuating stereotypes; we need to respect and be comfortable with our differences, honour what we have in common, share our hearts, and together, take on the monied/power elite that create our worst conditions. btw – how have we reverted to what has long been a faux pas – calling people coloured?
“how one looks is far less the issue and should be far less the focus.”
Really? How many times have you been profiled on the basis of how you look?
“is such an approach not one of erasure of those of whitish flesh?”
Really? Sounds like a nod to the racist ‘white replacement’ conspiracy theory.
while valid concerns, i did not say or imply there is not an ongoing and serious racism issue in our land and the world over. hate exists because of social conditioning, which includes the foment of differences rather than what makes us the equal, valued, bodies with loving soul energy.
what i did not state is that racism is not contained to those outed as being of so-called non-colour. it exists among every shade among the massive group now calling itself people of colour, as well. again, we are subject to being products of social conditioning, until we are willing to examine the bigger picture. moreover, such ignorance/hatred/fear exists among all ethnic divides, and even among language and sexual identity divides.
our undoing, and our cruelest actions human upon human, among all peoples throughout history, comes down to our socially conditioned fear/suspicion/hate/intolerance of “other”.
in a sentence, my point has long been thus: we need to be on board, together, as a cohesive whole, tolerant, nonjudgemental, compassionate, equal, free to explore and think and to be, and ever respectful of the rights of one another; enough of the us and them – it is together, or bust.
“Racialized Workers”. There is no such thing as race. Race is a 4-letter swear word that hurts. Sounds very colonial.
How about “minority groups”?
Bureaucratic ring to it.