This morning Statistics Canada released preliminarily income data from the 2022 tax year. This data is outside of the Census so isn’t as comprehensive and only those who file taxes are accounted for. We also have to remember that tax filers are individuals so often family units contain multiple tax filers.

The data is for CMAs which in Windsor represents all of Essex County. That being said there is still a fair bit we can takeaway from this data.

As mentioned on many other posts about the Census and not, the income supports from COVID bumped up incomes across Canada. Interesting pre-COIVD Kitchener Waterloo, London and Ontario were almost in disguisable from a median income perspective, but since 2020 a divergence has occurred with the London region lagging behind. Windsor does find itself at the bottom of this pack has one of the lowest median total incomes for taxfilers in Ontario. The only that is struggling worse that Windsor is the St Catherine Niagara region. Yay not us!

More interestingly if we look at the 75th percentile a solid “upper-middle class” income you see.

The divergence between Windsor and London and KWC, Ontario and Canada is also clear at this 75th percentile. The fact that Windsor and to a lesser degree London are begin to lag provincial and national the 75th percentiles points (obviously) to low wage growth in their communities and regions.

Looking at a smattering of Cities across SW Ontario and seeing how their incomes have changed year over year we see the table below.

Sarnia surprisingly out performs much of SW Ontario and comes the closest to the provincial average. Hamilton exceed this but that is true for most of the communities in the GTA region as they are dragging up the 75th percentile averages for the rest of the province. Windsor struggled and the big spike in income growth between 2019-20 was likely due to COVID benefits rather than a rise in comes. I suspect that the post COVID sorting that has been occurring into 2022 as people moved region were drivers for Windsor and London’s bumps in income.

I will certainly write more on this when the final data comes out, but the trend of Windsor being a low income jurisdiction in Ontario remains true as data begins to move into the “post-COVID” tax years.