The so-called middle class is the prized demographic for Canada’s politicians, pandered to at every opportunity in election campaigns, as the voting bloc most Canadians see themselves belonging to.
Nearly every major party has pitched some kind of middle-class tax cut or break on the campaign trail, in cuts that would take billions out of the federal coffers each year.
But the way Canadians personally define the middle class has shifted, in a time when the typical hallmarks of that lifestyle — like owning a home or taking annual vacations — are increasingly out of reach for younger adults.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development defines a member of the middle class as anyone who earns between 75 per cent and 200 per cent of the median household income after tax.
Based on the most recent Statistics Canada data, that’s a wide range — anywhere from $52,875 to $141,000.
And for some young working Canadians, it’s hard to attain.
Third-year nursing student Opeyemi Kehinde, 35, works 20 hours a week as a personal support worker while going to school full time and raising five kids with her husband, who works as a geologist.
Her definition of “middle class” is simply having enough money to survive for two weeks without a paycheque. Right now, her family doesn’t meet that threshold.
“We can barely afford the basics,” she said. “Just going day by day and praying there’s no emergency … and praying you don’t lose your job or you don’t fall sick, just because you cannot afford it.”
Her family moved from Edmonton to Cornwall, Ont., in 2022, hoping it would be more affordable. But rents have risen, and they’ve had to downgrade from renting a full house to a three-bedroom apartment.
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Kehinde says her household income was under $40,000 last year. She’s paying $1,880 a month for rent and her most recent hydro bill, covering the last two months, was $800.
She’s also found it frustrating trying to move ahead. Putting in extra work hours means incurring extra childcare expenses, and she has no nearby options overnight or on the weekends.
Meanwhile, the potential of moving up a tax bracket, or no longer being low-income enough to qualify for certain social supports, can have a whiplash effect.
“It should feel like we’re being incentivized to work, not punished.”
The 2023 Great Canadian Class Study found 42 per cent of Canadians considered themselves middle class, while about 17 per cent identified as lower middle class and 17 per cent as upper middle class.
University of Alberta sociology professor Michelle Maroto, a lead researcher on the study, says the term is “murky” and hard to define.
For older Canadians, she says the key indicators of being middle class haven’t changed much, but younger people don’t have those same expectations, and things have only become more difficult since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Maroto says she’d like to see politicians talk about a more progressive taxation system as a way to level the playing field and fund public education, health care and housing — which she says could bring back the hope of making it into the middle class for younger adults who are feeling disaffected.
“One of the reasons why we don’t necessarily have that middle-class lifestyle anymore is because … you have that top one per cent of individuals pulling away from everyone in terms of income, in terms of wealth,” she said.
Sam Reusch, a 35-year-old in Montreal, is the executive director of a charity called Apathy is Boring, where she works to get youth engaged in politics.
She says being middle class has a different meaning for her than it did for her parents. But while she graduated university right after the 2008 financial crisis and has had an adulthood marked by precarious economic conditions, she still grew up with hopes of owning a house.
Many younger adults she works with, she says, aren’t even considering the possibility.
“They’re like, ‘I just want to be able to not stress about making my rent, and be able to afford groceries and maybe a few nice things,'” she said.
Paul Kershaw, founder of non-profit Generation Squeeze and a professor with the University of British Columbia’s school of public health, says age and housing patterns are transforming class dynamics in Canada.
Today, a young lawyer earning six figures in Victoria, for example, might struggle to find a three-bedroom home to rent. Someone with a lower-paying job who bought a home decades ago, meanwhile, could now be sitting on property worth well over $1 million, and therefore have the security that allows them to live more of a “middle-class” lifestyle.
Kershaw says Canada has made a “political bargain” for the last 25 years that has eroded financial security for young people, in order to protect housing wealth windfalls for older generations.
“Politicians generally are going to say we need to protect the nest eggs of an older demographic. But the people providing the protection are actually younger people who, quietly and without any fanfare, pay higher rent and delay getting into home ownership, if not cancelling that dream entirely,” Kershaw said.
“They’re reducing their standard of living to provide protection. They’re like shields against what might otherwise cause risks to the wealth that has been accumulated in housing by people my age and older.”
He says the common narrative from politicians about inflation hurting “everyone” is not true if you factor in housing inflation technically making many homeowners wealthier. His own home, for example, has gone up in value by about $1.5 million since he bought it 20 years ago.
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“When a home’s value can provide almost three times as much prosperity as day-in, day-out hard work for someone who’s already well paid, you’ve got a problem in your economy.”
While he acknowledges there are many good reasons why politicians and economists don’t want a crash in housing prices, he says he’d like to see policy brought forward that acknowledges the sacrifice younger Canadians are making.
“If we’re going to offer $6 billion or $14 billion in tax cuts, let’s actually use it to compensate a younger demographic that is being absolutely hammered in our society.”
