Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for December 21st, 2006

At least that is the news for some folks. The year to date average salary increase is 3.1% which is higher than the current rate of inflation (which is always worrying, because that usually starts inflation up). The areas where wages are increasing the most are health and social assistance, followed by educational services retail and then manufacturing. There are over 187,000 more employees than from the start of the year in Canada too.

More jobs, and more wages, is a good thing, I think. The areas where salaries are increasing is quite interesting too. Health and Social Assistance is an interesting area to hear growth in wages, but also worrying. I think it is due to these areas getting little or no increases in the past few years, but now a lot of the new monies going to this area are going to wages? Educational Services is again another area where more money is going into, but it is being taken up by wage settlements. This kind of “catch up” helps the folks working in the areas, but does it add services or needed machinery or needed facilities? I don’t want to sound like I am against Teachers, and Nurses getting pay raises, but I’d like to see more money going to making the whole system better not just raising wages.

Interesting, no mention of high tech, and manufacturing employees are well below the average too. Not news to us in High Tech, but still interesting. –C8j

That is what Stats Canada said, the life expectancy of Canadians (both sexes combined) has surpassed 80 years! This is great to hear, and as you can see from the graphic, women are going to live until they are 83 whereas men will only last until 77 or so, but still, that is great news!

So! The statement, why should I plan for my retirement, I am not going to live that long, no longer pertains to YOU if you are a proud, Maple Leaf wearing, Canadian. Think it’s time to start planning retirement, open an RRSP, and start figuring out what kind of pension you might have. Better still pay down your debts so you don’t carry them into your Golden Year too, because those Golden Years are going to last a good long time!