Though it doesn’t change our reality, knowing where we stand can often be a comfort or make us feel less alone in our struggles.
Finding out she is iron deficient, for example, doesn’t make a patient feel less run down, but knowing why she feels the way she does at least explains things and makes her feel less crazy as she drags herself through her day.
A diagnosis can also help us make informed decisions about our health.
Similarly, knowing the fact that the population of Squamish is more than 29,200 (as of July 1st, 2023) helps us make sense of the increasing feeling that the community is much busier than it used to be.
It is!
(That Statistics Canada population figure is for the Squamish Census Agglomeration (CA), which means Squamish proper and the surrounding area.)
The recently released Squamish Community Foundation Living Wage For Squamish report reveals that the hourly wage each parent in a family with two young kids would need to earn to pay for the basics in Squamish is $25.13. That is $7.73 higher than the minimum wage for B.C.
In other words, the couple would need to earn a gross household income of $91,000 to survive in this town.
That doesn’t include money for paying any debts, accumulating savings or buying any extras.
So, if you are making that amount or less, and life feels like a struggle, it is not that you are mismanaging your money; it is the cost of living in this town.
And if you are an employer offering less than a living wage, that is likely why turnover is high.
The Community Foundation’s report also helps explain why so many of us have been losing friends and neighbours over the last few years, as the cost of living here increased.
“Many community members are opting to move due to financial strain,” the report notes.
“In 2016, the number of Squamish residents choosing to move in the previous five years was 26%; by 2021, this rate increased to 33%.”
Knowing this doesn’t give us a cure for what ails us, but it does arm us with information as we make our own decisions about staying, going, taking or leaving a job, or offering a higher wage during our company’s next round of hiring.
The next Stats Can population release is scheduled for early 2025 and will include population estimates as of July 1, 2024.
After creating this first report, the Community Foundation has vowed to continue producing these living wage reports.
It isn’t entirely clear who originally said this, but the sentiment is apropos here: “Knowledge shared is power multiplied.”
