Manitoba’s minimum wage will be increasing in the fall, but some are worried it doesn’t keep up with the rising cost of living.
On Monday, the province announced Manitoba’s minimum wage will rise to $16 per hour, a 20-cent increase, starting Oct. 1.
But according to recent polling conducted by Probe Research for the Manitoba Federation of Labour (MFL), 72 per cent of Manitobans said it’s not enough.
“While any increase to minimum wage is a good thing, they need a real increase to a minimum wage that gets them to a living wage, and this doesn’t meet that test,” said MFL President Kevin Rebeck.
He said the provincial legislation ties minimum wage to the past year’s inflation rate. This most recent increase is based on an inflation rate of 1.1 per cent.
Manitoba’s most recent consumer price index shows that from February 2024 to February 2025, the cost of food has increased 2.6 per cent, while shelter increased by 4.8 per cent, and transportation jumped 5.3 per cent
“Low-wage workers are always going to be playing catch-up. They’re already far behind. They’re already making poverty-level wages, and this law as it stands today doesn’t close that gap at all.”
It is not just workers feeling the financial pinch.
Tyler Slobogian, a senior policy analyst with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said these minimum wage increases are adding a heavier burden on small businesses.
“We’ve seen kind of wage costs remain as the top cost constraint for Manitoba businesses,” he said. “If you’re going to increase wages and increase the amount that small business owners are having to pay their employees, we should probably decrease taxes in another way.”
Manitoba Labour Minister Malaya Marcelino said this coming increase is the third minimum wage increase the current NDP government has made since taking office.
“We understand. This is one of the things that Manitobans have asked us to approach and to deal with as best as we can, which is the affordability crisis,” she said. “Our government hears about it all the time, so those are one of the main priorities that we have as a government.”
Marcelino did not directly answer when asked if she believes $16/hr is enough for workers to live on. She said the minimum wage increases are just one way the government is addressing the affordability crisis facing Manitobans.
“We have renters tax credits, homeowners tax credits. We even have $10-a-day child care that we’re expanding, free birth control. There’s a lot of things that we’re trying to do to make sure that we’re meeting Manitobans where they’re at in terms of affordability,” she said.
In terms of the current legislation, Marcelino said she is open to working with workers and the business community.
The MFL survey sampled 1,000 adults in Manitoba between March 4 and 16. It had a confidence level of 95 per cent with a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points.
