A long-term-care PSW needs to work 50 hours a week or more to afford the cost of living in Toronto. A look at the numbers
After tax and deductions, PSWs working in long-term care are short over $10,000 of what it costs to live in Toronto. RICHARD LAUTENS / TORONTO STAR FILE
Jan 16, 2021
By Angelyn Francis, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Toronto Star
In order for a personal support worker employed in a long-term-care home to make ends meet in Toronto, they’d have to clock at least 50 hours every week.
Here’s how the numbers break down: PSWs in unionized long-term-care homes start at about $20.80 per hour, and can earn up to about $22 hourly. If they are paid for 37.5 hours of work per week, they will gross $40,560 in a year at the starting rate, but the take home after tax is closer to $32,000.
But this is over $10,000 short of the 2020 cost of living in Toronto, estimated by lowestrates.ca. The insurance company found that for a single person renting a one-bedroom apartment, the cost of living is close to $42,500.
Meanwhile, in 2015, $55,117 was the median income for single-adult households in Toronto, according to Statistics Canada, which is just below the amount needed to meet the cost of living today, after tax.
Someone earning that amount would only have to put in about 20 extra hours over the course of a year to make ends meet — less than half an hour a week.
Cost of living can be greater too if the person is supporting a family, and it would be even more challenging if the person is the sole breadwinner for their household.
Long-term-care homes have been hardest hit by the COVID-19pandemic, shedding light on a system that has been dysfunctional for years. With cases and deaths climbing in the sector, the need to address ongoing issues has been made all the more urgent.
In Ottawa, a COVID-19 outbreak in a women’s shelter was linked to two long-term-care workers who were staying in the facility because they could no longer afford rent with their income.
Where PSWs are concerned, there is no oversight body, like there is for nurses, which advocates say has caused issues with low pay, precarious work and high turnover.
Matthew Cathmoir, the head of strategic research at the Service Employees International Union which represents health-care workers in Ontario, said PSWs wind up working as much overtime as possible to supplement their income.
“They accept as much overtime as possible; they’ll work doubles. So, they’ll work a 16-hour shift, which is unsustainable … it’s incredibly difficult work — hard on the body, hard on the mind (but) they have to do it,” he said.
Many PSWs also had more than one job, which was restricted during the pandemic to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Pandemic pay has offered a $3 per hour wage bump for eligible long-term-care workers, but Cathmoir notes that there have been challenges with the rollout.
All the while, in a recent survey the SEIU posed to its members working in long-term care, 92 per cent of the 700 or so respondents reported feeling overworked and understaffed during the pandemic.
“It’s difficult work. It’s dangerous,” Cathmoir said. “It takes a special type of person to work, specifically, and that goes for all (health-care positions).”
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Angelyn Francis is a Toronto-based reporter for the Star covering equity and inequality. Her reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. Reach her via email: afrancis@thestar.ca