Rising costs weigh on some Canadians during Covid-19: poll

While some Canadians working from home over the last year have saved on various costs such as transportation, others struggle with increased expenses, finds a new poll from FP Canada conducted in January.

About one-third of Canadian respondents (34%) said their household expenses increased during the pandemic, the poll said.

Respondents from Manitoba and Saskatchewan were most likely to say their household expenses had increased (43%).

The rising expenses came just when work was less stable for some. Nearly two in five respondents (39%) who were working at the pandemic’s outset said they’d experienced a job loss, pay cut or reduction in work hours over the past year.

“[M]any Canadians are struggling,” said Stephanie Douglas, a partner and portfolio manager with Harris Douglas Asset Management, in a release. “While many household balance sheets have benefited from government assistance, the [poll] findings are challenging the popular belief that this pandemic has been beneficial to everybody’s bottom line.”

In dollar terms, middle-income households gained the most from government support measures in response to Covid-19, according to StatsCan data from the first three quarters of 2020. On average, these households gained roughly $2,500 more in government support than they lost to decreased wages and self-employment income, StatsCan said.

While the FP Canada poll didn’t focus on how much expenses had increased in dollar terms for respondents, 10% said the increase was significant.

The poll also found differences in pandemic-related financial impacts based on such things as age, gender, geography and income.

For example, half of Western Canadians who were working when the pandemic began (49%) said their professional lives were negatively affected by the crisis, compared to one-third (34%) of Eastern Canadians.

Nearly half of Albertans who were working when the pandemic began said they’d either been forced out of the labour market (24%) or had to reduce their work hours (25%) in the past year — the highest level in the country.

Households with lower incomes were also more likely to say they were negatively affected by the pandemic. Among those who were working when the pandemic began, 59% of those with incomes less than $40,000 per year said their professional lives were negatively affected by Covid-19.

That figure was 34% for those with incomes between $40,000 and $80,000, and 32% for those with incomes above $80,000.

While many respondents (81%) were prepared at least to some extent because they had some savings, 41% had saved less than six months’ worth of expenses.

Those working with a financial planner were more than twice as likely to have at least one year’s worth of expenses.

In the last year, 24% of respondents said they’d been unable to save any money.

About the FP Canada survey: Leger conducted the online survey of 1,559 Canadians between Jan. 29 and Jan. 31, 2021. The polling industry’s professional body, the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, says online surveys can’t be assigned a margin of error because they don’t randomly sample the population.