Is $100,000 still the salary it used to be?

Jack S... if your name is not just a sononym for Jack ass, it should be. Have you never been in public, or did you just assume that the people working in every store, restaurant, movie theatre, etc. you have ever been to or every factory you have passed were well off and just working these horrible jobs as a hobby? If you are being serious, I would love to know what your job is that you were able to get it without any understanding of the world around you.

The question should really be, why is the average Canadian still only making less than $43,000 a year? With the cost of housing & overall cost of living in the GTA, is it any wonder people cannot make ends meet.

If you are making $100,000 a year, beleive me this individual is working to earn every cent through overtime. It is a choice not doubt, but also the money was there if one wanted to earn it, & if one was ambitious to go the extra mile to earn it.

Society as a whole should be looking to lift their ability to earn more per year. They should look to be compensated for their time worked, & not have a permenant part time position with full time hours, with no benefits. They should look to ban a companys ability to bank your hours, rather than to have to pay the overtime.Governments are not there to solve your problems. Why do you think the richest corperations had their tax rate reduced almost 50% to date, & yet our Federal Government still wants to reduce it another 1%. When was the last time the average Canadian shared in the same meaningful tax reduction.

As Canadians struggle & fail to keep up, the need to be mindful of the policies Governments are proposing to better their lives. Whenever I hear about a Government proposal that is going to benefit the average Canadian, I look to see yet again how this will actually cost me more money, & how the top 1% got another break at our expense.

@Danielle, what on earth is a sononym? I am quite serious. Maybe I am living is an isolated world, but 99% of the people I work with or live around make much, much more than $100K per year. This type of salary may have been "big" decades ago. When I was an university student 30 years ago, I made $40K per year on research grants and scholarships alone. My current job is nothing special. I am not a CEO or CFO or even a manager. I don't even have anyone reporting to me. I am a professional and well known and respected in my field world-wide. I worked long and hard to achieve this status and get paid accordingly. My children are also in university, work extremely hard (to a level that even scares me) and will be entering this high income level soon after graduation. People that work in restaurants or movie theatres are generally students. In the "factories" I work in and design, even the operators make more than $100K per year.

How about you all stop complaining and find a job that pays better than your grocery store job. if you want to make more money, then get an education and find a better job. no one is forcing you to stay in your job that pays shit. Clearly those salaries are out there and if someone can make it, then so can you. im only 25 and im already making over the "average" canadian income. in a couple years ill be over $50k. i worked hard for my job, and i got into an industry that has growth. Maybe you should have done the same thing too.

This artical made me sick... Literally. I actually projectile vomited.

I have gone to university, and even learned a trade, and I can't get anyone here in BC to pay me more than $30,000 a year. Now I read that some fucking mouth breather in Ontario who digs ditches for a living makes $100,000.
No wonder my roads are broken and inadaquate. No wonder my health care system is in shambles. No wonder my GOD DAMN TAXES are so fucking high. No wonder my province recieves such a measly share of it's own tax revenue. We have to send it to Ontario to pay all the public workers their exhorbitant wages. I bet it makes them really happy, and I even bet they'd line up to vote for the status quo on election day. To be honest, if I could get payed $100,000 a year to sunbathe and rescue the occasional drowner, I'd have voted Harper too.

I loved Becca's post
How could you possibly 'spend 10 yrs of university to train' ????
Your work weeks were often more than 80 hrs (are you serious! ) LOL
You are a 'highly trained scientist' Get serious!
You cannot afford a car! What bull!
You claim that people do get fired ... nonsense !!

Your post is full of nonsense!

I work for the federal government and I don't know where this author gets his data from, but I don't believe there are 70,000 PS workers in Ontario alone making over $ 100,000 a year. I doubt there are even that many PS workers in the federal government across the country making that kind of money. The only people in the PS who make over $ 100,000 a year are middle managers or higher and there aren't 70,000 middle managers in the federal PS....not even close. The highest union non-management jobs in the federal PS is barely at $ 95,000. I bet this author is taking into account the value of benefits and pension when he/she gives us this non-sense data. Someone above asked what the average federal PS worker income was base salary and I know for a fact it is $ 56,000 a year as stated by my employer about a half a year ago. Now keep in mind this does not include benefit or pension values...this is straight base salary. Makes sense to me. I am a professional in the federal government and I make $ 79,000 per year, so $ 56k per year average including those non-professional and admin. people is believable.

This comes out every year. And every year you get the jealous morons lining up to malign the public service.

They act as though the entire public service makes over $100 000 per year. They forget that the list is only a small portion of the public service. Does anybody ever actually look at the list? Your family doctor is on there. Your local police chief and fire chief are on there. The guys who run the nuclear plants are on there. The surgeons at the ER, at your local hospital are on there. The auditors who make sure taxes are paid to the Crown are on there. The guys who run your local utility are on there. Do you people really want these people to be underpaid? How easily people forget disasters like Walkerton.

There maybe a few people on that list who don't deserve to be on there (and even that's debatable....because the few regular joes that make it on, do so working insane over time). But by and large, most of the people on this list, deserve to be on there. I'd be worried if my doctor wasn't on it!

I work for the public sector and I can tell you I make no where near $100k a year, I wish I did though! Everybody thinks that everyone in the public sector makes a lot of money, what most do not realize is that most workers have a payrange and that once they reach their maximum salary they do not get any increases to offset the cost of living. In fact after say 10 years of working for the public sector a lot of workers find they are making less per paycheque then the were ten years ago duet to increase taxes they pay and various increases in benefit plans and pensions contributions. What I see is the problem is that the public sector tries to apply the same rules as the private sector when determining salaries making the usually claim it has to in order to attract the right talent. Thats the public sectors biggest mistake, they should be paying people what they would in the private sector and limit what they pay the workers here. The top person in my case the premier should make the most, then MPP's ,then everybody else should be making less than then them. My attitude is that somebody would be more than willing to work for the public sector even though they are not making as much as they would in the private sector. Just to inform everyone I have worked most of my life in the private sector and so I see both sides. So in regards to someone making $100k in the public sector it is a lot compared to what most people earn in the private sector. Unfortunately, the powers that pay feel the tax payers wallets have an unlimited source of cash to pay for all this and all the blunders and waste they generate.

The basic problem we all face is that the government's answer to it's cash problems has always been to raise taxes. Every year we are taxed more than the previous one and silently we take it. Government employees have for the most part had the same philosophy. We have heard them say things like they need higher wages, they need more security, they need bigger pensions. What they do not admit to is that they say to each other - don't worry the government has the money, they just need to raise the taxes.

80% of Ontario workers work in the private sector and 20% of Ontario workers work in the public sector. What is different today is that the 80% no longer want to foot the bill for the 20% who on average earn more, have more job security and much better pensions. The 80 % want their taxes to go down not up. We have finally decided to voice our opinions and let everyone know we have had enough.

If the government employees are so well educated as one writer states why can they not see how frustrated we are and how we are now demanding change. Why have they not looked at where our tax money is spent and help everyone by suggesting ways to save money.

Two Simple Ideas

One is we should make an offer to all government employees. It's really simple. You want to make more money - I understand. Suggest a way for the government to save money in your department or any department for that matter and we will give you 25% of the savings your idea creates. So if you save the government 200,000 in one year we will bonus you 50,000. All ideas must be made in a public forum ( although we would still protect your name) so everyone can see the details. You win with your bonus and we win by lowering costs. We have all long believed the allocation of money is suspect. This would be your chance to do good.

The second idea is also very simple. The Ontario government and the federal government audit businesses and people all the time. They will prosecute a 70 year old pensioner if they find they have made an intentional or unintentional error on their taxes. Take 25% of those auditors and have them reassigned to audit all government spending from now on. Not just once but continuously on an ongoing basis. Reward them with 25% of any money they find. If the government can charge a 70 year old or a welfare mom you can charge a government employee for mis-spending funds or hiding money. Accountability and transparency are important. So lets start with all government workers expense accounts - require everyone including high level government employees ( read Premiere) to post their expenses for all to see on the internet.

I know there would be thousands of people who would love the job of auditing government spending and would race to get a 25% bonus for any money found.

The bottom line is simple. We all pay too much for our taxes. They need to be substantially lower immediately. There is only a few ways to that. One - reduce spending to be able to lower taxes or two increase the number of people working in Ontario so the tax base is larger. So far the government has done neither. We cannot pass on these heavy costs to our children we need to fix this now.