N.S. wages outpaced inflation, grew far faster in 2025 compared to Canada overall

endure twelvemonth, half of workers in Nova Scotia made $27.37 an time of day or to a lesser extent — a 4.6 per cent growth from the median wage in 2024 after adjusting for inflation. 

In comparison, wages in Canada, excluding the territories, grew just 0.5 per cent.

There were wage increases across most industries in Nova Scotia, said Andrew Fields, a Statistics Canada labour market analyst. But, he said the health-care and social assistance sectors helped drive the wage growth.

Those sectors include workers in a broad range of workplaces like hospitals, residential care facilities and daycare facilities. 

The median wage for those sectors rose more than 10 per cent in 2025. Fields added that a large number of Nova Scotians are employed in those areas.

There were about “80,000 people employed in health care and social assistance in Nova Scotia,” Fields said. “So, an … increase in wages there will move the needle.”

According to a union representing some workers in the health-care and social assistance sectors, that spike in wages could at least partially be explained by retroactive payments and wage increases resulting from deals that followed expired collective agreements.

“It has become common practice in Nova Scotia to bargain expired collective agreements,” Laura Cutmore, with the Canadian Union of Public Employees, said in an email. 

That can mean workers don’t see wage increases until the next contract is negotiated.

Cutmore said there were wage increases and adjustments applied in 2025 for employees in acute care and “health support,” including payments retroactive to two years prior.

“As these two bargaining units are made up of a combined 14,763 workers, these payouts would impact the year-over-year” wage increase for the sector, said Cutmore.

A labour economist says the longer-term trends of wage growth are important, and there is good news there. 

Since 2019, Nova Scotia wages have increased relative to prices and also relative to Canada overall, said Lars Osberg, a professor at Dalhousie University. 

“So that gap is actually narrowing with the rest of Canada,” he said.

Nova Scotia previously had the lowest median wage among the provinces. But with last year’s increase, the province is now fourth-lowest. 

Still, people in the province continue to face affordability challenges.

Computer scientist Peter Altenkirk said his wages have not kept up with rising prices. He had intended to live and work in Halifax, but high rents led him to move.

“There was an opportunity in Truro. It paid less, but the rent there is less,” Altenkirk said. “And you know, the jobs here [in Halifax] didn't pay enough more to make it worth it.”

Altenkirk also plans to put his car away for the summer and use his bike instead because he can’t afford gas anymore.

“People are suffering far worse than me, and I'm not doing as well as I think my parents were doing when they were my age,” he said.

In the wake of the U.S.-Israel and Iran war, gasoline prices in Nova Scotia spiked. They increased an average of 19.7 per cent from February to March. That’s the largest single-month increase on record for the province, according to Statistics Canada.

Amid the trade war with the U.S. And the U.S.-Israel and Iran war, Canada has an insufficient social safety net that needs to be improved, Osberg says.

“When you have as much uncertainty as we have right now and the possibility of big swings, big increases in unemployment, that gets to be important for a lot of people.”

INTERACTIVE - Use this app to see how wages in Nova Scotia for different segments of people have changed over time:

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