Windsor sees largest drop in Canadian household income growth ranking

Windsor experienced the largest drop in its ranking for median household income growth over a 15-year perioud, following a new report from Fraser Institute ― but local employment leaders say the city has all the tools to bounce back in future rankings.

After ranking 11th-highest in 2005 for median household income in Canada, Windsor moved down to 33rd in 2019 — the largest drop in ranking for any of the “36 metropolitan areas in Canada covered by Statistics Canada,” according to Fraser Institute.

"The magnitude is really the part that caught our attention," said Fraser Institute senior fellow Steve Lafleur, adding the City of Windsor experienced many hardships between 2005 and 2019.

"To be honest, it wasn't entirely surprising that Windsor was at the bottom."

Southwestern Ontario has transformed from being one of the highest-income areas of the country to one of the lowest in just 15 years.

Learn more: https://t.co/injdOteF2v #onpoli pic.twitter.com/fqDnALX8x2

— The Fraser Institute (@FraserInstitute) March 30, 2023

Justin Falconer, CEO of Workforce WindsorEssex, said issues started to arise for Windsor in 2005, as the city started to experience "slow growth, unemployment rising and the population remaining stagnant."He recalled 2009 to 2011 as a "tumultuous time" for the city, primarily due to the 2008 global financial crisis and the restructuring of the North American auto industry.

"We saw a lot of plants and factories close and a lot of manufacturing jobs leave. There were a ton of layoffs," said Falconer.

"It was pretty dark days. Windsor's unemployment rate hit 14 per cent in 2009."

By 2016, Windsor's economy started to show signs of improvement. Over the next three years, Windsor began to attract jobs in several sectors, including advanced manufacturing, information technology, healthcare, and education.

For example, FCA Canada, formerly known as Chrysler Canada, invested billions of dollars in its Windsor assembly plant in 2016, which was expected to create more than 1,200 new jobs at the time.

While Windsor was on its "road to recovery" by then, there was one issue, Falconer said.

"Other communities started their recovery much earlier so we lost years of that recovery where we had low to no growth," he said.

Despite the Fraser report's findings, Falconer emphasizes that employers in Windsor are hiring, having brought in 26,000 new employees in the last six months and more than 190,000 people already working in the community.

For Windsorites concerned over the findings of Fraser's report, published Thursday, Falconer said those numbers point to an "old Windsor," as an influx of new and well-paying jobs on the way.

"With the EV plant, the supply chain, the construction of the hospital and new bridge and other things, I expect employment growth to be strong," said Falconer.

"If we were to look five years into the future, I think we're going to start passing communities. I think we're going to move up that list quite aggressively."