The Living Wage is the hourly amount that a worker needs to cover essentials, avoid chronic financial stress and participate in their community. It reflects a modest but decent standard of living, without many of the extras that some may take for granted.
The Living Wage is about more than wages alone. Making life more affordable also depends on community and government actions, such as access to affordable housing, childcare and transportation.
Understanding the Living Wage helps highlight where cost-of-living pressures are greatest, and where we can work together to build a stronger, more inclusive economy.
As a community partner working with Living Wage BC, Golden CED collects local costs for some of the budget items. Since 2025, the wage needed to cover all the costs is calculated for the following household types, then weighted by their prevalence in the population to produce a single wage:
In partnership with Tourism Golden, we drew on our experience with Living Wage research to better understand what constitutes a Living Wage for Temporary Seasonal Workers in Golden’s Tourism industry.
For this calculation, a Temporary Seasonal Worker is between 18 and 30 years old, from outside Canada, has a Working Holiday Visa and works in the Tourism sector.
