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Minimum wage not enough to afford rent in 2022: report – CTV News

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No one earning minimum wage was able to rent out an average apartment last year without spending more than one-third of their income on housing, a recent report has found.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a study on July 18 that says the rental wage – defined as the hourly wage needed so tenants spend no more than 30 per cent of their pre-tax earnings on rent while working a standard 40-hour week – was “considerably” higher than the minimum wage in each province as of October 2022.

The analysis included one- and two-bedroom rentals, which make up 33 and 50 per cent of all units, respectively, the report says.

The study’s authors, senior economist David Macdonald and political economist Ricardo Tranjan, write that even in provinces with the highest minimum wages — B.C., Ontario and Alberta — this has not translated into better living conditions because “landlords capture a larger share of those wages through high rents.”

“The wage increases that people fought so hard for should improve the material conditions of working families, not go back into the pockets of the property-owning class,” the report says.

The study says minimum-wage earners in most Canadian cities “are likely spending too much on rent, living in units that are too small, or, in many cases, both.”

The largest gaps between the minimum wage and rental wage required for an average one-bedroom apartment were found in Vancouver and Toronto.

In those two cities, the one-bedroom rental wage was twice the minimum wage set at the time. The rental wage for an average two-bedroom unit also was more than twice the minimum wage.

On June 1, the minimum wage in B.C. increased to $16.75 an hour from $15.65. In Ontario, the minimum wage is set to rise to $16.55 an hour on Oct. 1 from $15.50.

The only cities where the one-bedroom rental wage was lower than the minimum wage were Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivieres and Saguenay, Que.

“Even there, rental affordability is on the decline,” the study says. “Every other CMA in Canada has average rents that far exceed what workers earn on the minimum wage.”

In Sherbrooke, for example, the report says the 2018 minimum wage exceeded the one-bedroom rental wage by 18 per cent, compared to nine per cent in 2022.

For most cities, the number of minimum wage hours required to pay rent for a two-bedroom unit also increased between 2018 and 2022.

“In sum, a larger share of the hard-worked-for earnings of working-class families is now flowing from bosses to landlords, making the wealthy wealthier and leaving tenants poorer,” the report says.

“The so-called housing crisis is often presented as a mismatch between supply and demand, while the obvious transfer of income and wealth from low- to high-income earners is repeatedly overlooked.”

The authors point to at least three factors that they say are making rents too high for low-wage earners, including wage suppression policies, low supply of rental housing and poorly regulated rental markets.

“In other words, the mess in which we find ourselves is due to bosses keeping wages down with help from provincial governments that set the minimum wage and federal governments that control monetary policy,” they say.

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Netflix’s subscriber growth slows as gains from password-sharing crackdown subside

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Netflix on Thursday reported that its subscriber growth slowed dramatically during the summer, a sign the huge gains from the video-streaming service’s crackdown on freeloading viewers is tapering off.

The 5.1 million subscribers that Netflix added during the July-September period represented a 42% decline from the total gained during the same time last year. Even so, the company’s revenue and profit rose at a faster pace than analysts had projected, according to FactSet Research.

Netflix ended September with 282.7 million worldwide subscribers — far more than any other streaming service.

The Los Gatos, California, company earned $2.36 billion, or $5.40 per share, a 41% increase from the same time last year. Revenue climbed 15% from a year ago to $9.82 billion. Netflix management predicted the company’s revenue will rise at the same 15% year-over-year pace during the October-December period, slightly than better than analysts have been expecting.

The strong financial performance in the past quarter coupled with the upbeat forecast eclipsed any worries about slowing subscriber growth. Netflix’s stock price surged nearly 4% in extended trading after the numbers came out, building upon a more than 40% increase in the company’s shares so far this year.

The past quarter’s subscriber gains were the lowest posted in any three-month period since the beginning of last year. That drop-off indicates Netflix is shifting to a new phase after reaping the benefits from a ban on the once-rampant practice of sharing account passwords that enabled an estimated 100 million people watch its popular service without paying for it.

The crackdown, triggered by a rare loss of subscribers coming out of the pandemic in 2022, helped Netflix add 57 million subscribers from June 2022 through this June — an average of more than 7 million per quarter, while many of its industry rivals have been struggling as households curbed their discretionary spending.

Netflix’s gains also were propelled by a low-priced version of its service that included commercials for the first time in its history. The company still is only getting a small fraction of its revenue from the 2-year-old advertising push, but Netflix is intensifying its focus on that segment of its business to help boost its profits.

In a letter to shareholder, Netflix reiterated previous cautionary notes about its expansion into advertising, though the low-priced option including commercials has become its fastest growing segment.

“We have much more work to do improving our offering for advertisers, which will be a priority over the next few years,” Netflix management wrote in the letter.

As part of its evolution, Netflix has been increasingly supplementing its lineup of scripted TV series and movies with live programming, such as a Labor Day spectacle featuring renowned glutton Joey Chestnut setting a world record for gorging on hot dogs in a showdown with his longtime nemesis Takeru Kobayashi.

Netflix will be trying to attract more viewer during the current quarter with a Nov. 15 fight pitting former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson against Jake Paul, a YouTube sensation turned boxer, and two National Football League games on Christmas Day.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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