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After accounting for inflation, wages in Nova Scotia grew far faster in 2025 than Canada overall, according to Statistics Canada data analyzed by CBC News.<\/p>\n
Last year, half of workers in Nova Scotia made $27.37 an hour or less \u2014 a 4.6 per cent increase from the median wage in 2024 after adjusting for inflation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In comparison, wages in Canada, excluding the territories, grew just 0.5 per cent.<\/p>\n
There were wage increases across most industries in Nova Scotia, said Andrew Fields, a Statistics Canada labour market analyst. But, he said the health-care and social assistance sectors helped drive the wage growth.<\/p>\n
Those sectors include workers in a broad range<\/a> of workplaces like hospitals, residential care facilities and daycare facilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n The median wage for those sectors rose more than 10 per cent in 2025. Fields added that a large number of Nova Scotians are employed in those areas.<\/p>\n There were about \u201c80,000 people employed in health care and social assistance in Nova Scotia,\u201d Fields said. \u201cSo, an \u2026 increase in wages there will move the needle.\u201d<\/p>\n According to a union representing some workers in the health-care and social assistance sectors, that spike in wages could at least partially be explained by retroactive payments and wage increases resulting from deals that followed expired collective agreements.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has become common practice in Nova Scotia to bargain expired collective agreements,\u201d Laura Cutmore, with the Canadian Union of Public Employees, said in an email.\u00a0<\/p>\n That can mean workers don\u2019t see wage increases until the next contract is negotiated.<\/p>\n Cutmore said there were wage increases and adjustments applied in 2025 for employees in acute care and \u201chealth support,\u201d including payments retroactive to two years prior.<\/p>\n \u201cAs these two bargaining units are made up of a combined 14,763 workers, these payouts would impact the year-over-year\u201d wage increase for the sector, said Cutmore.<\/p>\n A labour economist says the longer-term trends of wage growth are important, and there is good news there.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since 2019, Nova Scotia wages have increased relative to prices and also relative to Canada overall, said Lars Osberg, a professor at Dalhousie University.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSo that gap is actually narrowing with the rest of Canada,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Nova Scotia previously<\/a> had the lowest median wage among the provinces. But with last year\u2019s increase, the province is now fourth-lowest.\u00a0<\/p>\n Still, people in the province continue to face affordability challenges.<\/p>\n Computer scientist Peter Altenkirk said his wages have not kept up with rising prices. He had intended to live and work in Halifax, but high rents led him to move.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was an opportunity in Truro. It paid less, but the rent there is less,\u201d Altenkirk said. \u201cAnd you know, the jobs here [in Halifax] didn’t pay enough more to make it worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n Altenkirk also plans to put his car away for the summer and use his bike instead because he can\u2019t afford gas anymore.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are suffering far worse than me, and I’m not doing as well as I think my parents were doing when they were my age,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In the wake of the U.S.-Israel and Iran war, gasoline prices<\/a> in Nova Scotia spiked. They increased an average of 19.7 per cent from February to March<\/a>. That\u2019s the largest single-month increase on record for the province, according to Statistics Canada.<\/p>\n Amid the trade war with the U.S. and the U.S.-Israel and Iran war, Canada has an insufficient social safety net that needs to be improved, Osberg says.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you have as much uncertainty as we have right now and the possibility of big swings, big increases in unemployment, that gets to be important for a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n INTERACTIVE – Use this app to see how wages in Nova Scotia for different segments of people have changed over time:<\/p>\n MORE TOP STORIES <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46],"class_list":["post-636063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1777453701_733_default.jpg\")
Computer scientist Peter Altenkirk had intended to stay and work in Halifax. However, he said high rents led him to move to Truro. (Dave Laughlin\/CBC)<\/p>\n