Toronto/CMEDIA: With increase in homelessness in Canada, there is a reportedly a corresponding increase in the number of workers in the homelessness support sector.
An increase of 60.7 percent workers between 2016 and 2021 was seen by the sector saw a when there were 10,130 people employed in the field, said Statistics Canada adding that this outpaced the growth in all other sectors by 3.4 per cent.
The majority of homelessness support workers lived in larger urban areas (70.8 percent), with over half working in Ontario (4,000 workers) and B.C. (2,270 workers) with nearly half of all workers were in Canada’s largest cities while only nine percent of workers were in rural areas.
“The homelessness support sector provides support to individuals experiencing homelessness, and to individuals accessing services that are targeted toward those at risk of facing housing crises,” StatCan said in a report released on Wednesday. “Homelessness support sector workers can be found in the community food and housing, and emergency and other relief services industry.”
Aaccording to 2021 Census data, nearly three quarters of workers (73.8 percent) in this sector were women compared to just under half (48.2 per cent) in all occupations. Between 2016 and 2021, more men (nearly eighty percent) entered the sector, bringing the total to 2,655 men and 7,475 women.
Workers aged 15 to 24 more than doubled in size from 625 to 1,455, while workers in one-parent family households also increased by 94 percent.
With eleven percent of workers with an Indigenous identity, there was an increase of a 65.7 percent over 2016.
There was also an increase of 134.1 percent racialized group.
Homeless workers were also more likely to live in poverty than all other sectors with a 3.4 percent reduction in their median employment income of $34,000 from 2020 to 2016.
In the same period, all other sectors saw a four per cent increase to $41,200, not adjusted for inflation.
According to previous StatCan data, more than 235,000 people in Canada experience homelessness in any given year, a number that’s been growing but difficult to calculate.
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