H.G. WatsonReprinted from Rabble.ca
For a minimum wage worker, how much does it cost to make a nutritious meal?
Let’s assume you’re a meat eater, and that you want at least one carb and one vegetable on your plate. You’ll also probably want something to drink. We’ll also assume you work in Ontario, where the minimum wage is $10.25.
To put together a meal of chicken, potatoes and carrots with milk to drink based on Canada’s average food prices, is going to run you about $16 -- just over an hour and half of work.
Apply the same test to trying to find a bachelor apartment. In Toronto, where the average rental rate is $873 a month, you would have to work 85 hours a month at minimum wage to pay for a bachelor apartment. That's slightly more than half a month's worth of regular, full-time hours. Whatever you have left over goes to food, utilities and other costs.
With that in mind it’s easy to understand why people would opt to take the crappier, yet cheaper, apartment, or perhaps eat off the dollar menu at McDonalds.
And these are just the averages.
