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“We all know the stories — all our kids getting really good educations but too many of them are still stuck living in their parents’ basements, still in low-end service jobs that don’t really take advantage of all the education that we’ve paid for,” Stewart-Patterson said in an interview.

“Our report provides some pretty persuasive, quantitative evidence that yeah, there really is a systemic pattern here. These aren’t just stories of individuals — there really is a pattern that’s unfolded over a prolonged period, a pattern which has some disturbing implications going forward.”

He pointed out that top Canadian earners fought for principles of equal work for equal value, yet their children now face lower wages and reduced pension benefits even if they’re doing the same work at the same employer.

The trend is particularly troubling, he added, because as the Baby-Boom generation moves into retirement, Canadians will be relying on a smaller share of the population to drive economic growth and sustain the tax base that supports public services.

Canada therefore needs average employment incomes to rise, not fall behind, in order to pay for the increasing health-care costs of the baby-boomer generation, among a host of other expenses, Stewart-Patterson said.

“We are moving into an era where people of working age are going to be increasingly scarce; that should put upward pressure on wages going forward,” he said.

“And yet, if we look at the past 30 years … the real incomes that are being earned in the workplace by younger workers have barely budged after inflation. That creates an issue in how much governments can raise in tax revenues, how much can our economy grow?”