Firms plan 'cautious' wage hikes

Tavia Grant, The Globe and Mail
December 08, 2009

Employees in the public sector can expect higher wage gains in the coming year than their private-sector counterparts, a national report said Tuesday.

Public-sector workers who are non-unionized will get, on average, 3.2-percent pay increases next year compared to 2.5 percent on the private-sector side, according to the Conference Board of Canada. Unionized employees in the public sector will likely see pay hikes of around 2.3 percent, compared with 2-percent increases in the private sector.

Canadian workers in general can expect typical pay increases of 2.7 percent next year, the board said in its annual compensation planning survey. That's up from the 2.4-percent average increase in 2009, but much lower than the 4.2-percent hike in 2008, when the economy was booming.

"Compensation planners are showing signs of cautious optimism," said John Rankin, interim vice-president of leadership and human resources research. "Still, lingering uncertainty about the strength of the recovery may lead to slight downward revisions to projected pay increases in 2010."

Last year, one in five employers gave no increases. Next year, however, just 8.3 percent of employers expect salary freezes.

Workers in Saskatchewan and Manitoba will likely get the largest increases, while pay raises will be lower in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec.

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