WEB EXCLUSIVE: The dynamic duo
Paul Halley and David Greenberg are unknown to most Haligonians but their upcoming collaboration is one of the coolest things happening on the city’s music scene this spring.
Photo: Istockphoto
Web exclusive: Why pay more?
By Alison DeLory | Jun 16, 2010Halifax is the quintessential livable city. It boasts a vibrant arts and cultural community, six universities, fewer stressors than bigger cities (shorter commutes) and it’s perched on the beautiful Atlantic coast. The dark cloud to this silver lining is that Halifax is so desirable that lots of people want to live and work here—thus, employers can pay them less than they’d make elsewhere in Canada.
There are exceptions, like the telecommunications industry, but on average salaries in Halifax are lower than national averages. And have been for a long time.
The most recent Statistics Canada data, collected in November 2009, shows average weekly earnings here are 13 per cent below the Canadian average ($733.10 locally versus $841.25 nationally) and because Nova Scotians pay higher than average income taxes we take home less still.
Using census and industry pay data to compare salaries here and elsewhere the disparity is obvious. Paralegals, paramedics, teachers, mechanics, senior managers, retail sales clerks, chefs and secretaries—almost everyone could make more if they moved west.
Karen Gordon, a human-resources professional, has been building compensation programs for small and medium-sized businesses in Halifax for more than 20 years. Now a partner with Rosson, Johnson and Gordon Organizational Development Consultants, she says lower pay has always been the reality in Halifax, which has not experienced the economic booms Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary have. “There has never been that push here,” Gordon says. “From the director level down salaries are about 10 per cent lower. All organizations do this.”
The city’s deep labour pool is the culprit, according to Fred Morley, executive vice-president and chief economist of the Greater Halifax Partnership. “Nothing has convinced employers they need to pay their workers more money,” Morley says. “That is the history.” There are notable exceptions, like federal government employees, and finance and insurance industry executives, but overall wage disparity persists because Halifax has traditionally had high unemployment and many people want to move here.
Kimberly Walsh, who blogs under the moniker “East Coast by Choice,” is one such person. Walsh, 35, moved from Toronto to Halifax with her Newfoundland-born husband in 1999. She found a job, finished a public-relations degree at Mount Saint Vincent University, then landed her current job with the CBC as web content product and social media manager. “I didn’t think it would be a long-term stay but after we got settled into our jobs we began to realize there are so many opportunities to get ahead here, more than there would be in a bigger city,” she says.
In Halifax, Walsh believes, it’s easier to stand out. “I’ve gone further, faster in my career here than I would have in a bigger city,” she explained. “Sure a bigger city means bigger money, but the commute, cost of living, access to green open spaces—in the concrete jungle you don’t have all that.”
In every city you could complain about something, Walsh says. “I want to embrace the positive experiences of living in Halifax.” She includes among her favourite Halifax things: spectacular dining, a dogs-off-leash park and walking trail five minutes from her affordable suburban home and her quick commute. “Everything is so close here.”
Mark Surrette is president of Knightsbridge Robertson Surrette, a Halifax-based executive recruitment, career transition and HR company. He knows all about selling Halifax’s extras. “We can’t compete cash-on-cash,” he says. “If an individual is purely looking for cash they’ll go to Toronto, Boston, New York, Chicago or Calgary.”
While he points out that wage disparity depends on the industry, role or level of the position, Surrette does find compensation to be an issue. “[It’s] a challenge about 50 per cent of the time [when recruiting from out of area],” he explains. “What Halifax offers is the total basket. Reasonable compensation, ease of access to get to work, country club and golf club memberships that are pennies to the dollar in other places. Private schools that cost $10,000 instead of $40,000 [annually].”
Gordon’s clients have never had trouble finding qualified employees to fill job openings in Halifax, despite the lower pay. “They love moving to Halifax, it’s such an attraction.” And there is always a huge number who left Halifax and are keen to return, says Morley, especially expatriates who have children and want to come home to raise their families.
But can Halifax employers assume the worker-to-job surplus is likely to continue? A looming labour shortage is a sure thing, according to Elizabeth Beale, president and CEO of the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council. “There was the view for a long time that there were lots of people [job seekers] around,” she says. “Employers who wanted to hire people said, ‘This is a nice place to live and you can still do okay here.’ Things are changing.” Baby Boomers are now in their mid-40s to mid-60s, the population is aging, birth rates are declining and there are more people retiring than entering the Halifax job market.
Contributing to the situation is the labour market’s increased mobility. “Young people vote with their feet,” Beale says. They get on the Internet, they see the jobs with better salaries offered in other cities and they move. “New graduates tell me they have more opportunities elsewhere,” Beale says. “The era of surplus labour and cheap labour is coming to an end.”
Jim McNiven, a senior policy research advisor and professor emeritus at Dalhousie University, agrees. He warns that Nova Scotia’s low birthrate and the fact that Halifax already has an older-than-average workforce puts it in a precarious position. “We start feeling a squeeze when more people are leaving the work force then entering it,” he says. He points out that the province is already sitting close to zero unemployment and as the economy improves, without a doubt, there will be a labour shortage.
Talent attraction and retention is a major concern at the Greater Halifax Partnership; government and businesses will need to adjust policies and create a more attractive working environment, says Morley. Halifax has had some success with this already, he says, citing local growth of high-wage sectors like defence and aerospace.
McNiven, too, has been urging governments to start addressing the looming labour shortage, by doing such things as abolishing mandatory retirement and getting better at matching job seekers with openings.
In any case, Gordon’s not worried. When the supply of labour no longer satisfies the demand for workers the effect is going to be obvious, she says. “The market will move itself if it needs to,” says Gordon. The market is flexible. “If you can’t recruit a worker at $50,000, the employer will pay $55,0000. In my experience most organizations will bend. A labour shortage will raise salaries.”
McNiven concurrs. “The days of there being a significant wage disparity between this end of the country and the rest, based on the surplus population, are gone,” he says. “Whether business people have woken up to this yet is another story.” He projects that in three to five years, Halifax will have wage parity with the rest of Canada. It’s already begun happening in skilled trades industries; he points to Heritage Gas. It recently had to pay Saskatchewan rates to employees installing natural-gas lines in Halifax.
But according to Surrette, it’s about more than just the money. Compensation has to be competitive, but Halifax will have to go further to increase its edge. “Employers have to start to realize that there will be a shortage of talented individuals in the days ahead,” says Surrette. “We need to be better at providing fully costed compensation packages.”
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Waiting for a flight at Stanfield International Airport last week, I was sitting near a woman who was talking on her cellphone to her husband in Toronto. She told him she would move to Halifax “in a heartbeat.”
Halifax has so much to offer. It is not just a place to get a good job. It is a place to get a great life!
Having lived in the US and all over Canada…the state of things in NS frustrates me to no end. It’s the least pet friendly in the country, highest taxed, lowest paid, and you can’t go a week without hearing about some sort of gov’t spending scandle? and how do they recoup these spending costs of the caught MLAs? oh…a slap on the wrist and a tax hike. Makes perfect sense.
We took a pretty substantial pay cut to move to Halifax. It was an easy choice. Even though I’d only been to Halifax once. And I’d do it all over again.
The lifestyle is so much better for us than Calgary was. That said, it’s probably all about expectations. The grass is always greener and all that… I’ve lived in nine different Canadian cities and can find little to complain about here. Sure, my taxes are a bit higher (actually almost twice that of Calgary) but other costs of living are lower and I can accept that that’s the cost of living here. Had I lived here all my life, I know might see things differently. But I haven’t and so, I count my lucky stars every time I fall asleep in this beautiful, vibrant city.
Oh, and once you’ve paid $15 an hour for babysitting in Calgary or Toronto, you gain faith in the ability of the labour market to move salaries when it needs to.