City No. 4 for incomes
National report shows median family earnings of $77,200
Dave Hall, Windsor Star
Published: Saturday, May 27, 2006
Windsor's image as a "lunch-bucket town" has been transformed into one of a city full of workers with highly paid technical skills not only in the automotive industry but also in the health sciences, finance and software engineering fields, said a former business professor at the University of Windsor.
A recently released Statistics Canada report shows that Windsor's median, two-parent family income in 2004 was ranked fourth in Canada and trailed only Oshawa -- another city dominated by the auto industry -- government-heavy Ottawa-Gatineau and booming Calgary.
MARKETABLE SKILLS
Alfie Morgan said "it's a testament to the fact that many workers in this city have highly marketable technical skills across many different employment sectors.
"This notion of Windsor being a lunch-bucket town in the sense that all we have here are low-skilled or semi-skilled labourers has been rejected by the numbers in this survey," said Morgan. "It's historical data in that it's based on 2004 incomes and while it may have eroded somewhat, it certainly hasn't plummeted."
HAS DROPPED
Windsor's median family income was $77,200 in 2004, which is a drop of one per cent from the previous year.
Doug Newson, central region director for Statistics Canada, said "a large concentration of high-paying jobs such as those in the auto sector is what drives up the median figures.
"It's that heavy concentration which drives up the numbers and where there are good unionized, largely stable jobs, average incomes tend to go up," said Newson.
Morgan said a large number of Windsorites with high-paying professional careers in Detroit is another reason for our high median income.
"Clearly these people working in consulting, software engineering, mechanical engineering and the health sciences field shows they have highly marketable, desirable skills, not only in Windsor, but across the border," he said.
TECHNICAL WORKFORCE
Morgan said the absence from the top five of such cities as London, traditionally thought of as a white-collar employment-rich community, is further evidence of a shift toward a more technical workforce.
"One would think that London with its large numbers of highly paid people in the health sciences sector such as doctors, nurses, technicians, researchers and such would be near the top of the rankings," said Morgan. "London's absence speaks volumes about the lucrative nature and skill levels of tool and die workers, CAD/CAM technicians, mouldmakers and others in our community."
And while Windsor's numbers are boosted by commuters to Detroit so too are Oshawa's, where large numbers of residents commute to Toronto for high-paying positions.
Newson said in recent surveys it was found that for Oshawa residents, their travel-to-work distance is fairly high and "one of the major reasons for that is travel to high-paying jobs in Toronto.
"People tend to commute for a reason and the reason is usually a good job," said Newson.
The report, generated from income tax returns, only compares large urban areas and not those such as Fort McMurray, where high-paying oilsands jobs have lifted family income beyond $120,000, and Yellowknife, where the diamond industry has pushed median family incomes above $115,000.
BY THE NUMBERS
Median total income of two-parent families for 2004:
Top Five
Oshawa $83,100
Ottawa-Gatineau $82,100
Calgary $77,800
Windsor $77,200
Kitchener $75,700
Bottom Five
Vancouver $61,800
Saguenay $61,200
Sherbrooke $59,400
Abbotsford $59,000
Trois-Rivieres $57,700
Canada overall $64,800
Source: Statistics Canada
© The Windsor Star 2006