After growing 2.9% in 2021, Halifax’s household income per capita grew a further 3.7% in 2022, the sixth fastest across benchmark cities. However, the level of household per capita income, $51,424, was the lowest across benchmark cities.

Though income in Halifax grew in 2022, inflation was almost twice as high at 7.3%. With inflation outpacing income growth, purchasing power in Halifax declined 3.6% in 2022. This followed a 1.0% decline in 2021. However, this trend was not exclusive to Halifax. Purchasing power declined in eight of the 10 benchmark cities; only St. John’s (+4.0%) and Calgary (+0.8%) saw increases.

According to the Census of Canada 2021, the median annual income in Halifax in 2020 was $42,000. Across selected groups, those ages 25-64 and Men+¹had the highest median incomes in 2020, earning $49,600 and $47,600, respectively. Visible minorities had a median income of $31,000, followed by Black Nova Scotians, at $33,600. The median incomes for Indigenous individuals ($38,800), Women+¹($38,000), those ages 65 and older ($37,200), and first generation Canadians²($34,000) were all lower than the $42,000 overall median.

The inflation rate across Nova Scotia was 7.5% in 2022, the highest since 1982 when it hit 9.4%. Gasoline prices increased 30.9% in 2022, which was the most across all product groups in Nova Scotia. Transportation costs, closely associated with gasoline prices, saw the second-highest growth at 12.9%.

Nova Scotia’s mean individual effective tax rate³for individuals was 12.5% in 2020, the fourth highest across provinces. This is the aggregate rate that Nova Scotians paid to the federal and provincial governments as income and payroll taxes.

Halifax’s poverty rate, as measured by the share of the population with after-tax income below the Market Basket Measure (MBM)⁴threshold, was 8.2% in 2021. The poverty rate held stable at only 0.1 pp below 2020, but has dropped by 10.0 pp since 2015. Halifax’s poverty rate was the fourth highest across benchmark cities.

The MBM threshold for a family of two adults and two children in Halifax was $52,439 in 2022. This has grown by $8,662 since 2015, $4,176 of which came between 2021 and 2022 alone. MBM thresholds for food and shelter grew by $1,388 and $1,222, respectively, from 2021 to 2022. Other expenses (+$943), transport (+$576), and clothing (+$46) all saw increases in their thresholds in 2022. Clothing was the only component that saw a decline (-$11) in its threshold compared to 2015 levels.

Data on poverty rates for selected groups are available from the 2021 Census. Using this measure, Halifax had an overall poverty rate of 10.5% in 2020. Both Men+⁵(10.6%) and Women+⁵(10.4%) had similar rates to the overall figure. Visible minorities had the highest poverty rate across selected groups at 23.4% followed by first generation Canadians⁶at 22.0% and Black residents at 17.9%. The poverty rate for Indigenous residents was lower at 11.3%. There was a noticeable difference between the poverty rates of those ages 17 and younger (11.5%) and those ages 65 and older (5.9%).

The average income for the top 5% of Halifax earners reached $157,800 in 2020 compared to $20,700 for the bottom 50% of income earners. The $137,100 gap between the two averages is the highest since recordkeeping began in 1982. However, the share of total income attributed to the bottom 50% grew to a record high of 23.5% in 2020 while the share attributed to the top 5% fell to a record low of 14.2%.

According to the 2021 Census, 38.2% of Halifax families earned $100,000 or more in total income. Compared to 2016, this represents growth of 3.3 percentage points. The number of families in Halifax earning less than $60,000 fell by 2,320 while the number of families with income of $60,000 or more increased by 20,570.

The 2021 federal budget outlined plans for a publicly-funded universal child care system. As part of the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) agreements, all provinces and territories agreed to reduce average monthly child care fees by December 2022. The CWELCC also has a goal to reach an average fee of $10 per day by 2026.Compared to 2019 levels, child care fees in Halifax fell by 43.7%, 45.0%, and 47.1%, for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, respectively.

Lower fees do not guarantee access, however. According to the CCPA’s survey, fewer than 5% of child care centres in Halifax had capacity to enrol a new child as early as the next week. In fact, 14 out of 30 cities surveyed by the CCPA said they have little to no capacity to accept an additional preschooler in the next week.

Statistics Canada reports provincial-level survey results for families encountering difficulties with child care. In 2022, the most commonly cited difficulty among families using child care was the availability of care in their community (65.9%). Issues related to scheduling and affordability also were mentioned by significant shares of respondents.

Our Halifax-level data on child care come from our annual City Matters Survey, carried out by MQO Research. Almost 40% of respondents strongly agreed when asked if they were using sub-optimal child care arrangements because they had no other option. Almost one-quarter disagreed when asked if they could access child care at a reasonable cost. Opinions on affordability have improved substantially since 2018, likely in response to the significant increases in government funding for child care.

As the pandemic waned and government income-support programs wound down, there were concerns that debt delinquencies would skyrocket in 2022. Fortunately, this was not the case. In fact, Halifax’s average annual non-mortgage debt per consumer in 2022 was $20,936. This was 0.7% lower than the figure in 2021 which, in turn, was 7.7% lower than in 2020. Looking at quarterly data, non-mortgage debt in Halifax hit its lowest level on record in Q1 of 2022 and ended the year at $20,964 per consumer, the second-lowest figure on record.

With record-low levels of non-mortgage debt, delinquency rates were also at historically low rates. In 2022, the annualized delinquency rate for Halifax was 1.0%, the lowest year on record. Nationally it was even lower at 0.9%. In Nova Scotia overall the rate was slightly higher at 1.2%. Quarterly figures started telling a slightly different story in 2022 as non-mortgage delinquency rates increased 0.14 percentage points between Q1 and Q4.

Out of the nine cities that Equifax Canada reports on in their Major City Analysis, Halifax ranks as the city with the fourth-lowest average non-mortgage debt per consumer and delinquency rate.

Consumer insolvencies⁸totalled 1,295 in 2022. After two years of declines, 2022 saw insolvencies increase by 169 over the 2021 level. This increase was driven by the growth in consumer proposals⁹with 192 (+29.5%) more than in 2021, taking the total number of proposals to 843. Consumer bankruptcies¹⁰continued to decline falling by 23 (-4.8%) from 2021 to 452.