The median wage for those sectors rose more than 10 per cent in 2025. Fields added that a large number of Nova Scotians are employed in those areas.<\/p>\n
There were about \u201c80,000 people employed in health care and social assistance in Nova Scotia,\u201d Fields said. \u201cSo, an \u2026 increase in wages there will move the needle.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to a union representing some workers in the health-care and social assistance sectors, that spike in wages could at least partially be explained by retroactive payments and wage increases resulting from deals that followed expired collective agreements.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has become common practice in Nova Scotia to bargain expired collective agreements,\u201d Laura Cutmore, with the Canadian Union of Public Employees, said in an email.<\/p>\n
That can mean workers don\u2019t see wage increases until the next contract is negotiated.<\/p>\n
Cutmore said there were wage increases and adjustments applied in 2025 for employees in acute care and \u201chealth support,\u201d including payments retroactive to two years prior.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs these two bargaining units are made up of a combined 14,763 workers, these payouts would impact the year-over-year\u201d wage increase for the sector, said Cutmore.<\/p>\n
A labour economist says the longer-term trends of wage growth are important, and there is good news there.<\/p>\n
Since 2019, Nova Scotia wages have increased relative to prices and also relative to Canada overall, said Lars Osberg, a professor at Dalhousie University.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo that gap is actually narrowing with the rest of Canada,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Nova Scotia previously<\/a> had the lowest median wage among the provinces. But with last year\u2019s increase, the province is now fourth-lowest.<\/p>\n Computer scientist Peter Altenkirk had intended to stay and work in Halifax. However, he said high rents led him to move to Truro. (Dave Laughlin\/CBC)<\/p>\n Still, people in the province continue to face affordability challenges.<\/p>\n Computer scientist Peter Altenkirk said his wages have not kept up with rising prices. He had intended to live and work in Halifax, but high rents led him to move.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was an opportunity in Truro. It paid less, but the rent there is less,\u201d Altenkirk said. \u201cAnd you know, the jobs here [in Halifax] didn’t pay enough more to make it worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n Altenkirk also plans to put his car away for the summer and use his bike instead because he can\u2019t afford gas anymore.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are suffering far worse than me, and I’m not doing as well as I think my parents were doing when they were my age,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In the wake of the U.S.-Israel and Iran war, gasoline prices<\/a> in Nova Scotia spiked. They increased an average of 19.7 per cent from February to March<\/a>. That\u2019s the largest single-month increase on record for the province, according to Statistics Canada.<\/p>\n Amid the trade war with the U.S. and the U.S.-Israel and Iran war, Canada has an insufficient social safety net that needs to be improved, Osberg says.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you have as much uncertainty as we have right now and the possibility of big swings, big increases in unemployment, that gets to be important for a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n INTERACTIVE – Use this app to see how wages in Nova Scotia for different segments of people have changed over time:<\/p>\n MORE TOP STORIES <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After accounting for inflation, wages in Nova Scotia grew far faster in 2025 than Canada overall, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,11320,11316,242,11318,1672,11319,11317,11315],"class_list":{"0":"post-22763","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-canada","9":"tag-collective-agreements","10":"tag-median-wage","11":"tag-nova-scotia","12":"tag-social-assistance","13":"tag-statistics-canada","14":"tag-wage-growth","15":"tag-wage-increase","16":"tag-wage-increases"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Computer](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/a0a76e7cfd74eb1e253528e662089bc9.jpeg\"\/)
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