Seasonally adjusted figures indicate rising employment in the BC farm sector this year, and those earning minimum wage can look forward to bigger paycheques this month.
The province mandated a 2.6% increase to the minimum wage on June 1, lifting it to $17.85 an hour.
This is the highest minimum wage of any province in Canada, and will continue to increase annually in step with inflation.
According to Statistics Canada, BC farms employed 17,000 people last year, but the number is trending up. Seasonally adjusted figures for April indicate a 1% increase in employment versus a year earlier as the growing season got underway.
Piece rates for 15 hand-harvested crops increased on January 1, and will increase by 2.6% at the end of this year.
The minimum also applies to foreign workers employed on BC farms, though like much of the agricultural workforce, they often receive compensation packages that exceed the statutory minimum.
While the increases take place at scheduled intervals, they hit the farm sector particularly hard given a variety of other rising costs.
To offset the impact, the BC Agricultural Council (BCAC) called on the provincial government during last fall’s election campaign to introduce a wage subsidy for essential farmworkers.
“This would help offset increased production costs as BC’s minimum wage has gone up 47.6% since 2017,” BCAC said at the time.
The issues of labour and production costs are among those being considered by the premier’s task force on agriculture and the food economy, which began meeting this spring.
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