From today’s StatsCan Daily:

Canadian families with two or more people had an estimated median income after taxes of $54,100 [in 2004], up about 2% from 2003 in real terms after adjusting for inflation.

and

Statistics Canada’s low-income rate measures the percentage of families below the low-income cutoff (LICO). The LICO is a statistical measure of the income thresholds below which Canadians likely devote a larger share of income than average to the necessities of food, shelter and clothing.

In 2004, about 3.5 million people were in low income. They accounted for 11.2% of all Canadians in 2004, well below the peak of 15.7% in 1996.

Among families, the proportion living in low income after taxes declined to 7.8% in 2004 from 8.5% the year before and a high of 12.1% in 1996.

The news is not uniformly good: not all groups saw a significant improvement in their situation in 2004. But it does seem part of an encouraging trend in real incomes.

Real weekly earnings appear to be rebounding from their low in 2003, although they have yet to reach the previous peak:

And this improvement in earning isn’t entirely due to the increase in hours worked. Real hourly wages have also been increasing, and have caught up to the previous peak: