It is the Labour Day weekend, that bittersweet end to summer. But as much as Labour Day signals that it is time to think about back-to-school and the new projects at work, it is also a good time to take stock of how we all are doing in terms of what we actually get paid for our work.

There are lots of ways to count earnings, but one of my favourite measures is employment by occupation. If you are a chef, your own industry benchmark is other chefs; comparing your earnings in the hospitality sector to the earnings of those in health care. for example, is not necessarily a fair comparison.

To see how everyone stacks up, I’ve downloaded data from Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey, and measured how pretax hourly earnings have changed over the past year (July, 2012, to July, 2013), five years and 10 years. (Though some of the surveyed employees are paid by the week, not the hour, Statistics Canada converts everyone to hourly wages.) The original data are not adjusted for inflation, so I’ve done that, using Statistics Canada’s consumer price index. Self-employed workers are not included in the data … to read the rest of Nazareth’s commentary, click here.