When Quebec raises its minimum wage Friday, the increase will come nowhere close to lifting the lowest-wage workers out of poverty, warns a study released Thursday.
As of Friday, Quebec workers will be entitled to a minimum pay of $16.60 per hour — a 3.1 per cent increase from the previous $16.10 baseline. For tip earners, the minimum wage will be set at $13.30 per hour.
The share of Quebecers earning minimum wage is small: just 4.8 per cent of workers fell in that category in 2025, a report from Université de Sherbrooke found.
Friday’s bump will leave workers across the province well below the income rate needed to escape poverty, according to the Institut de recherche et d’informations socioéconomiques, a Montreal think tank.
After taxes and government benefits, the study says the average full-time minimum-wage worker will take home $27,647 per year — just two-thirds of the $41,585 a single person needs to live in Montreal.
Housing costs are the biggest driver of unaffordability in Montreal, said Eve-Lyne Couturier, the study’s author. A single Montrealer now needs around $18,400 for housing, the study estimates, while a family of four requires $26,600.
A higher minimum wage and more government support could help lift workers out of poverty, Couturier said.
“But if we only do that without tackling the reasons that the cost of living is increasing non-stop, we’re only responding to half the problem.”
Governments need to work to bring down the cost of living, the researcher argued, especially the cost of housing.
“Acting on non-market housing to decrease the cost of housing would have a significant effect on the budget required to escape poverty,” Couturier said, stressing a need to offer “housing that isn’t speculative.”
Investments in public transit, which reduce the need for a car, and measures to lower the cost of groceries would also reduce poverty, she said.
The minimum wage wasn’t deemed high enough to keep workers out of poverty in any of the seven cities studied. In Trois-Rivières, where the cost of living is lowest, the study found a single person still needs to earn $33,249 to avoid poverty.
By the end of 2026, Quebec will have the fifth-highest minimum wage of the 10 Canadian provinces. At $18.25 per hour, British Columbia will offer the highest minimum wage, while Alberta sets its baseline at $15 per hour — the lowest in the country.
I’ve reported for The Gazette since 2024. I love covering a good politics story, but any day I tell Montrealers something new about the world around them feels like a good one. Got a tip for me? Email me at jawilson@postmedia.com