The Alberta Disadvantage

Alberta’s United Conservative Party (UCP) government has kept the minimum wage frozen for almost a decade. At $15 an hour, Alberta’s minimum wage is the lowest in Canada. The UCP also cut the minimum wage for students under 18 working fewer than 28 hours a week to only $13 an hour.

Here's a table listing the current general minimum wage rates in Canada.

Sources: Government of Canada, Government of Alberta (page 17), Government of Ontario, and Government of Saskatchewan.

The table shows that as of October 1, every province, territory, and the federal government increased their minimum wage in 2026 — except for Alberta.

The UCP government is also out of step with most other provinces in two ways: (1) in not annually raising the minimum wage in line with inflation, and (2) in having a lower wage for young workers.

Indexing the minimum wage to inflation

Freezing the minimum wage is effectively a wage cut, since workers’ spending power is eroded by inflation. Before the UCP government froze the general minimum wage, Alberta raised the minimum wage each year from 2011 through 2018.

However, while Alberta’s Progressive Conservative government raised the minimum wage annually in 2011-2014, in each of those years Alberta had the lowest minimum wage or was tied for lowest among the provinces. To address this injustice and boost consumer spending in local communities, Alberta’s New Democratic government raised the minimum wage more quickly in 2015-2018 than in past years. As a result, Alberta had the highest minimum wage among the provinces from 2016 to 2018.  

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a common measure of inflation. Here’s a table listing Alberta’s CPI for the last eight years and the level of minimum wage Alberta would have had if the UCP increased the wage annually in line with inflation.

Source: Statistics Canada Table 18-10-0004-02. Author’s calculations.

The table shows that if Alberta had indexed its minimum wage to inflation, it would have risen from $15 an hour in 2018 to $18.37 in 2025. Alberta’s CPI increased by 3.8% between October 2025 and August 2026, so it’s fair to say that the province’s inflation-adjusted minimum wage should be above $19 an hour as of October 1, 2026.

The political party that wins the next provincial election should lend support to minimum-wage workers by immediately raising the minimum wage and then indexing it to increase each year in line with inflation, just like most other provinces do.

Alberta added jobs during the 2015-2018 period of big minimum wage hikes

Then-Premier Jason Kenney established an advisory panel in 2019 to examine the nearly 50% increase to the minimum wage implemented by Premier Rachel Notley over four years. Notley’s New Democratic Party (NDP) government raised the general minimum wage from $10.20 in 2015 to $15 in 2018 and eliminated the lower wage for liquor servers.

The report produced by the UCP government’s panel includes the following data table, which summarizes Alberta minimum-wage employment by age from 2014-2015 to 2018-2019.

Source: Government of Alberta. 26 February 2020.

One can assume the UCP was hoping the panel would find damning evidence they could use to criticize the NDP. But the opposite happened.

What stands out most from the table is that, for almost every age cohort, the number of jobs increased as the NDP raised the minimum wage. The two exceptions were:

• The number of 15- to 17-year-olds making minimum wage declined by 1,700 in 2017-2018 but then grew by 7,600 in 2018-2019.
• The number of 40- to 44-year-olds earning minimum wage declined by 1,100 in 2015-2016 but then increased by 3,400 in 2016-2017.

The panel’s research results broadly confirm findings from the existing social science literature on the employment effects of raising the minimum wage. In short, the available research shows that minimum wage increases tend to result in a small percentage of teens losing their jobs, while the losses for adult workers are effectively zero. This is because the vast majority of minimum-wage workers are necessary to businesses, and if employers must cut, they lay off their least-experienced employees.

So, the NDP government raised the minimum wage by almost 50% over four years, and the vast majority of minimum-wage workers kept their jobs while enjoying a fairer rate of pay.

Public policy decisions involve trade-offs. Raising the minimum wage has much higher upsides than downsides. What the panel’s report indicates is that if the NDP had not increased the minimum wage, then a small percentage of additional job gains would likely have been realized by teenage workers. Meanwhile, 200,000 workers — who are mostly women with significant work experience — would be stuck making poverty wages and being less able to support their families and local economies.

Benefits of raising the minimum wage

It is always good to remember that minimum-wage jobs are essential to our economy. Keeping the minimum wage frozen is not good for workers, the government, or the economy. In fact, there are many benefits to raising it.

Freezing the minimum wage forces many employed Albertans to rely more heavily on the government and the charitable sector for assistance to make ends meet.

Raising the minimum wage improves consumer spending power and stimulates local economies because low-income earners not only spend most of their income but also spend it chiefly in their community.

Raising the minimum wage also slows down widening income inequality, especially as about half of Alberta’s minimum wage workers are racialized, and about 60% are women (see pages 11 and 12 of the 2024 demographic report).

Full-time workers should not be poor. They should be lifted out of poverty, but that’s not the case with a $15 minimum wage.

While the living wage varies from community to community, it is universally over $18 an hour in Alberta. The living wage in most Alberta communities in 2025 was over $20 an hour. Earning a living wage means workers are better able to afford the necessities of life, including healthier food for their children and themselves.

Minimum-wage hikes don’t hurt our economy. They help ensure more working Albertans are fairly compensated for doing essential jobs that our entire society and economy rely on.

Alberta’s underpaid essential workers deserve nothing less than a living wage.

 

Note: images illustrating this post were AI-generated.