Here is the actual cost of an employee’s salary paid at the minimum wage in 2021 vs 2010 (source: Emploi-Québec). These benefits apply to a convenience store employee with less than 3 years of working experience in the store and to an employer with an overall store payroll of less than $1 million.
In short:
- From May 1, 2010 to May 1, 2020, the all-inclusive hourly minimum wage went from $11.02 to $15.52, an increase of 41%;
- Benefits payable by c-store employers add 15% to their salary, while the average in Quebec is 16.58%. This is so because most c-store payroll is less than a million dollars per year;
- This means that labor costs have increased by an average of 3.72% per year, while Quebec is growing at an average rate of 1.6% per year;
- For the same period, according to the Institut de la Statistique du Québec, inflation would have increased by only 1.6% per year on average since 2010;
- Thus: the growth rate of labor costs in Quebec since 2010 is on average 240% higher than inflation and that, year after year, an increase that convenience stores have no choice but to absorb in reductions of expenditure or increases in income.
Among the payroll taxes that increased the most are:
- The minimum wage, #1 cause for the increases: it rose from $9.50 to $ 13.50, or 42% increase;
- The contribution rate to the Québec Pension Plan: increase of 69% of its cost per hour worked since 2010;
- Even though the contribution rate to the Employment Insurance went down, the weekly contribution increased by 30%.