Two weeks is too much?
Feb 08, 2022
With sky-rocketing housing costs and inflation at a 30-year high, millions of Canadians find themselves scraping by between pay periods. [...]
The most recent survey from the Canadian Payroll Association found that 36 per cent of respondents said they live paycheque to paycheque.
But proponents of a new approach to payroll called "early wage access" say time's up for the traditional model of getting paid once every two weeks.
Canadians have stagnant wages, inflation is the highest in 40 years, an average house in the big cities goes for over $1 million, and the federal government imports 400,000 people every year. Yet, the media discusses this so-called problem of delayed payroll:
Early wage access — also known as on-demand pay — is facilitated through app-based, third-party services offered by employers. These allow workers to get some of the money they've already earned without the two-week delay or the high interest rates offered by pay-day loan services. [...]
If your cellphone bill is due a couple of days before payday, you could access the funds to clear that bill before incurring a late fee, for instance. Or you could restock groceries when you run low instead of eating ramen for a week.
Most Canadians get paid every two weeks. If you worked from Jan. 30 to Feb. 12, then you'll get paid for that period on Feb. 17. So, one has to wait 18 days to get the pay for the work on Jan. 30. However, there's a flip side. Everyone has access to credit. One can spend on a credit card for the whole month of January and get the bill on Feb. 1. The due date is Feb. 21. This delayed payroll and interest-free credit spending largely cancel out themselves.
Now, if you've got student loans, car payments, maxed out credit cards, and a negative balance in your chequing account, then instant on-time pay is not going to be the solution to your problems.
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