Everyone has to work if they are to survive and live a good and decent life as a human being. Jobs are the work we do for pay. Jobs have been have been listed as one of the basic needs of life after food, shelter, clothing, and security.
The amount of pay received when one has completed the work assigned to them determines whether the person will feel appreciated and motivated to perform any other task given to them.
Their ambition, hard work, loyalty and pride in the work they do are also determined by the returns that they get after completing their job or in the stipulated time of payment, these returns should be adequate to ensure that a worker has a better standard of living. In Canada today different jobs have different salaries, there are those that are highly paid and those that are lowly paid.
Statistics on low paying jobs
Lowly paid workers in Canada are not only teenagers, school and college dropouts, or the less educated as many people have assumed. The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in its recent studies has found out that seventy five percent of new jobs created in Canada in the last one year paid wages that were lower than the average standard.
Most low paying jobs are in the industrial sector, in leather and cloth manufacturing, food and accommodation services, management support, retail and other agricultural sectors.
These jobs pay below ten dollars per hour (Human Resources and skills Canada 3). Some of these jobs in the service industry include hotel cooks, chefs, counter attendants and cashiers, retail salespersons and clerks, security guards and general farm workers.
These jobs are mostly taken on a part time basis rather than fulltime jobs because their pay is so low that they cannot fully satisfy an individual’s need (Kerstetter110).
Although most of the jobs with low salaries do not have unions, others like school teachers and language teachers in colleges. Clerical and junior administration jobs are also in the category of low paying jobs especially when the jobs are full time.
It is important to note here that low paid workers are mostly female and many of them are above the age of 35. Most of them tend to stagnate in these positions even after they have increased their knowledge and skills on the jobs that they do through getting diplomas and other certificates.
Statistics on high paying jobs
Apart from experience, education level also plays an important role in determining the amount of pay received in particular jobs. College graduates are among the highly paid workers in Canada, most of them receive over a hundred dollars of average annual income.
Among those topping the list are engineers in the IT, chemical and manufacturing, oil and petroleum and other sectors with the highest salaries. This could be because of their small population and the lack of competition in their fields.
Engineers constitute less than two percent of undergraduates. Considering an individual’s position in a company or industry, salaries can vary according to the sales capacity and the market of goods especially in the private sector (Black 251).
Workers in the health sector also receive significantly high salaries as compared to other fields with specialist physicians earning about 180 thousand dollars of annual income, dentist about 132 thousand dollars annual income, general practitioners and family physicians earn an average of about 133 thousand dollars per year and nurses earning just a little bit less. This can also be attributed to their small population and the high demand for their services.
Senior managers in production and service industries are also included in this group; they earn an average of between 160 thousand and 165 thousand dollar in annual income. Lawyers earn an annual average of 124 thousand dollars and judges are estimated at around 179 thousand. This estimates do not take include some allowances bonuses and other payouts made to the individual.
Discussion on effects of low paying jobs
The debate on whether the salaries given to particular jobs are genuine or not and the negative effects of low paying jobs continues in Canada with enough evidence of an increase in earnings inequalities. Low paid work has been increasingly isolated with workers facing many barriers to their advancement into better paying jobs.
Many of them are offered jobs because of their skills at that moment without any consideration of their advancement in future. They are rarely considered for training either by their employers or even by the government. Most of them have no access to some services like health insurance incase of chronic illnesses and mortgages (Maxwell 5).
Conclusion
According to Vandenberghe (108), it is important to realize that the payment of salaries for jobs depends on the knowledge and skills acquired by an individual.
The government should set out strategies to increase education and skills in order to create an effective and flexible workforce that is able to receive better and sustainable salaries for their work. Some of the measures that should be taken include strengthening of college and other tertiary education programs by providing sustained and reliable funding.
Try to develop responsibility and accountability in the public in order to achieve goals and targets in increasing public knowledge. There should also be efforts to give better financial support to students and support seminars, training programs and promotions in the workplace so that people are more ambitious.
Works Cited
Black, Ken. Business Statistics: Contemporary Decision Making: John Willey and Sons, Inc., 2009. Print.
Human Resources and skills Canada. Minimum Wages in Canada: theory, Evidence and Policy. July 2008. Web.
Kerstetter, Steve. A Closer Look at Low Wages in BC; Behind the Numbers. Vancouver: Canadian center for policy alternatives, 2010. Print.
Maxwell Judith. Smart social policy –“making work pay. Ontario: Canadian policy research networks, 2002. Print.
Vandenberghe Vincent. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Canada. Paris: OECD, 2008. Print.