‘Invisible poor’: Middle-income households making up to $125K annually getting squeezed out of the GTHA: report

An office worker talks on the phone in the financial district of Toronto, on Thursday, June 2, 2016.

The working middle class in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area – a group that includes teachers, nurses and other essential workers – have become “the invisible poor” and could soon be squeezed out of the region due to the ongoing housing crisis, a new report suggests.

On Tuesday, CivicAction published the first instalment of a four-part research series delving into the challenges middle-income workers in the GTHA face.

The authors of the report defined middle class households as those making anywhere between $40,000 and $125,000 annually, based on data from Statistics Canada.

“Despite steady employment, they are increasingly becoming our region’s ‘invisible poor’—often overlooked because they have jobs and are assumed to be managing, even as rising costs push them towards financial precarity,” the report reads.

Since those who belong to the working middle class make more than what would qualify them for traditional housing supports, CivicAction says that the group ends up spending 45 to 63 per cent of their income towards housing—far surpassing the 30 per cent chunk typically recommended by financial experts.

“I’ll give you the example (of) a nurse earning $80,000 a year today, (they) will need to earn over $200,000 to qualify for a mortgage for an average Toronto home,” Leslie Woo, CivicAction’s CEO tells CTV News Toronto. “That’s our current situation.”

The report notes that while the annual median household income in Toronto is $100,400, salaries have not kept up with rising housing costs.

As a result, Toronto’s price-to-income ratio has now reached 11.8 times the median household income, meaning homebuyers in the city with an average income would need to dedicate 76.9 per cent of their salary toward mortgage payments on an average priced home.

The report warns of a “downstream crisis,” which is when working people and families are past their financial breaking point and have to make hard decisions, up to and including leaving the region entirely.

In the last decade, more than 500,000 people from the GTHA moved elsewhere in the province, like to the Simcoe or Niagara regions, while roughly 31,000 people moved to other provinces in Canada, like B.C., Alberta, Nova Scotia or New Brunswick.

Workers dissatisfied with housing and commute

CivicAction is actively conducting an online survey, analyzing responses from middle class workers who commute at least 30 minutes each way, either by car or public transit. The survey’s preliminary results, compiled in early May after four weeks of polling, found nearly two-thirds of middle-income workers—62 per cent—are unsatisfied with either or both their housing or commuting situation.

The majority of respondents—67.7 per cent—indicated wanting to do something to address their current dissatisfaction, with around 39 per cent considering changing jobs to so they are closer to home or just shy of 29 per cent looking to find a place to live closer to work

“We recognize that the folks who power this region, nurses, firefighters, personal care workers, teachers, they are—I think—a critical part of what makes this region livable, and their voice and an understanding of their needs, needs to be part of when policies are being made or initiatives that are underway, or money that is being spent, that we’re truly benefiting them, and the best way to ensure that is to understand more deeply how they’re affected and what it is that they need in order to meet their needs and their families needs,” Woo said.

How this impacts the GTHA

The high levels of stress mounting for middle-income workers in the GTHA can spill into other aspects of life, the report suggests, acting as sort of a “canary in the coalmine” that can create an untenable situation for the region in the long run.

The report notes a growing number of middle-income workers are less than “one pay cheque away” from falling into serious financial distress, with the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada’s well-being survey determining 56 per cent of Canadian households are struggling to keep up with their financial commitments—up from 38 per cent in 2019—while 35 per cent borrow money to cover the costs of daily expenses, which is up by eight per cent since 2019.

More people are using the food bank. According to a 2024 report by the Toronto Daily Bread Food Bank and the North York Harvest Food Bank, the two organizations saw a record-breaking 3.49 million visitors, amounting to one in 10 residents having used their food banks last year.

But the affordability issue goes far beyond how it is impacting individual households.

From the business standpoint, the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis in 2024 determined 29 per cent of local businesses reported difficulty attracting employees while 20 per cent struggle to retain skilled employees.

“Perhaps most concerning for regional economic development and competitiveness, the Toronto Region Board of Trade (2022) found that 42 per cent of businesses are considering relocation specifically due to workforce housing challenges,” the report notes.

The workforce housing crisis can also impact the quality of service, as the report estimates $575 million is lost annually in the health-care system due to staffing challenges or overtime requirements, $320 million in losses in the education sector due to turnover rates and substitute staffing and $230 million is lost in the emergency services sector due to increased response times and staffing challenges.

The GTHA’s traffic infrastructure is also burdening the economy, with the report pointing to the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis’ estimations in 2024 has cost $10.1 billion annually over the last decade with 88,000 fewer jobs.

“If congestion had been reduced, real GDP in the GTHA could be $27.9 billion higher today—representing a 4.9 per cent increase over GTHA’s 2024 economic performance, corresponding to an additional $3,400 in economic activity per person,” the report states.

What can be done?

The report provided preliminary actions to address the housing affordability challenge for middle-income workers, suggesting employers could look into housing assistance programs or workforce housing initiatives, It also said that municipalities can measure and track data around shelter usage to understand the magnitude of the housing problem and provide adequate housing supports.

However, CivicAction will be publishing three more reports, which Woo says will address, in part, why the math doesn’t add up.

“I think we can anticipate that, at its crux, part of what we will see in the next paper is that no one source of funding is going to be adequate. No one sector is going to be enough, and that, then, really will lead to paper three and four, which will speak about specific solutions that we want to see some action on,” Woo said.

Are you a middle-income worker in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area choosing between moving away to somewhere more affordable or making it work in the region? Share your story by emailing us at [e-mail] with your name, general location, and phone number in case we want to follow up. Your comments may be used in a CTV News Toronto story.