Indigenous workers still earn less than non-Indigenous Canadians and are more likely to work fewer hours than they want, a recent Statistics Canada report says.
The report, released last month, showed Indigenous people earned an average of nine per cent less than non-Indigenous people in 2022.
The report — which looked at employment for First Nations people living off-reserve, Metis and Inuit — didn’t only look at earnings. It also studied factors such as type of role, hours worked, skills development and training and coverage by collective bargaining agreements.
The goal of the report is to determine if Indigenous people are more likely to work in lower quality jobs, says Danielle Lamb, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University whose previous research has shown that Indigenous people are less likely to have permanent full-time jobs than non-Indigenous people.
Determining job quality for Indigenous people is “a very nuanced discussion,” said Lamb. “Unfortunately, in Canada I don’t think we have the quantitative data to really give us an accurate picture of the reality facing many Indigenous workers.”
The data show some improvement, she says. The wage gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people is shrinking, she says.
The gap in median household income between non-Indigenous and Indigenous people has also been shrinking since 2005, a 2023 Indigenous Services Canada report to Parliament showed.
Still prevalent
Indigenous people were more likely than non-Indigenous people to have temporary jobs.
In 2022, 24.3 per cent of First Nations people and 21.6 per cent of Metis people had jobs that lasted less than 12 months. Only 19 per cent of non-Indigenous people had jobs that lasted less than 12 months. Indigenous people were also more likely to work seasonal jobs.
“They’re not necessarily bad jobs, just because they’re not full-time permanent,” says Lamb. “They might be good jobs, and they might be jobs that people have chosen because they liked the work, they liked the flexibility.
“The concern is where people are stuck, where they would like to work more hours, they would like a full-time job, and they’re unable to access it.”
Indigenous people are more likely to find themselves in that situation, the report says, although it did not say why.
In 2022, almost 25 per cent of Indigenous people who worked 30 hours a week or less did so involuntarily, meaning they wanted to work more hours but could not. In contrast, only 18.6 per cent of non-Indigenous people had involuntary part-time work.
Involuntary part-time work “is considered an indicator of underemployment and may be associated with financial stress,” the report says.
Racism and discrimination continue to be part of the work experience for many Indigenous people in Canada, the report says.
In 2016, Indigenous people were twice as likely as non-Indigenous people — 17 versus eight per cent — to report discrimination at work. They are also less likely to be managers.
Clayton Daury says discrimination and racism continue to be a common experience for Indigenous workers in Canada. For three years, Daury has worked at the Aboriginal Peoples Training & Employment Commission, part of the Native Council of Nova Scotia. The organization helps off-reserve First Nations individuals in Nova Scotia find long-term employment.
“Racism is still very prevalent,” said Daury, who is a member of the Wasoqopa’q First Nation in Nova Scotia. And that can be a huge barrier and huge deterrent for people to get into specific fields where they don’t feel welcome, and where they feel they can’t grow.”
Before working at the council, Daury worked in provincial correctional centres with Indigenous inmates.
“I very much felt like I was hired as a token piece,” he said. He was the only staff he knew who identified as Indigenous.
Daury says he is seeing more Indigenous people find high quality jobs, including union jobs. Employment programs are specifically important for First Nations people who do not live in First Nations communities and cannot access employment services that may be located there.
Lamb, at Toronto Metropolitan University, says more research is needed to fully understand the quality of Indigenous peoples’ jobs.
“Our work contributes so much to our lives, for better or for worse. In our culture, it’s really important, and we spend a lot of time at our jobs,” she said.
Everyone should have equal opportunities to get high quality jobs, she says.
“Given our history in Canada, of the colonialism and the way that we’ve very badly treated the Indigenous people, I think we really have to take an honest look at ourselves and say, ‘Are we doing what we can to remove barriers so that everyone has access for fair opportunities in the labour market?’”
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