Highest-income households saw investment gains while wages dropped for lower-income ones in 2024: StatCan

Money is removed from an ATM in Montreal, Monday, May 30, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

Canada’s highest income households saw investment growth, while lower income households’ wages dropped at the end of last year.

That’s according to Statistics Canada’s Monday release detailing personal income in 2024’s final quarter.

“Most wealth is held by relatively few households in Canada,” reads the report, which found that the top 20 per cent of earners’ net worth in the fourth quarter averaged $3.3 million per household.

The bottom 40 per cent of earners, by contrast, averaged around $84,000 per household.

Housing and mortgage debt

The least wealthy households increased their net worth at the fastest pace overall, due in part to above-average real estate gains.

In other words, people who may not have been able to afford a home in 2022-2023 were able to get a mortgage due to easing interest rates and relatively lower housing prices.

As a result, average mortgage debts increased, but real estate logged larger gains.

Disposable income

Disposable income – the amount of money a person or household has left over after taxes and deductions – outpaced average inflation among all household quintiles, though higher-earning households saw more significant gains.

The highest income group had $212,741 in disposable income per household on average – a 5.9 per cent increase from last year.  

On the other side of the spectrum, households that earned the least logged $30,415 in disposable income on average, amounting to a more modest 3.6 per cent increase from the year before.