Earlier, we talked about the cost of living in Canada for a new immigrant. That article will be a good starting point if you haven’t read it already. For the initial few weeks (or possibly months) while you are searching for a job, you will need to factor in those expenses at a bare minimum.
We recommend giving yourself time to find jobs in your own field. However, if you don’t have enough savings and want to start earning right away, you may also take up a “survival job”, a job that pays minimum wage to at least cover your expenses. Many new immigrants take up survival jobs such as a cashier or a server in a local store or a coffee shop while they continue to search for jobs in their own field of education or profession.
The 4 largest provinces have a minimum wage ranging from $13 to $15 an hour. Working for 5 days in a week and 8 hours every weekday you can get at least $2200 a month before taxes (and around $1800-1900 after taxes depending on your province). If you are a couple, you can make $4400 before taxes on minimum wage and that will be more than enough to cover your expenses but you won’t be saving a lot with that income. During that time, you can keep searching for a job of your choice without worrying about burning through your savings from your home country.
Once you get your preferred job in your own line of work, your salary will be much higher than the prevalent minimum wage. You can now open your purse strings and start spending on those discretionary items you had put on hold while also saving money to buy a car or a house.
But how much income is a decent enough income? Of course, it varies from person to person depending on their spending habits. If you want to find it out for yourself, then try calculating what other discretionary expenses you may have other than the bare minimum expenses we mentioned. For example, you may want to spend $4000 every year on an overseas vacation or you may want to buy a car with a $500 monthly loan payment and a $250 monthly insurance. Once you add your total, also factor in the amount you want to save. Ideally, you should save 30-50% of your salary before you purchase a house.
Once you add everything together, that will be your target income and then you can see what kind of jobs offer a salary good enough for you to achieve your targets. When you start searching for your preferred jobs, you can take help of websites such as Glassdoor or Payscale to find out average salaries for the jobs you are interested in. You may also speak with people in the industry to find out typical salaries.
For the majority of folks, it won’t be an issue but for some people, they may already be earning really well in their home country and the average salaries in Canada for that job may be lower than what they are earning right now. So, do check for salaries in your line of work just to make sure what you can expect to earn. We have seen people with very high salaries moving to Canada knowing very well they won’t earn the same here but then they moved here for the quality of life. Money can’t buy peace of mind.
Related Topics
Cost of living in Canada for a new immigrant
How to find a job in Canada