So I am raising my SEO Consultation rate to $40 CDN per hour. (Which you may have noticed if you see the section above or below where is says something like the following:
It used to be $35 per hour, which is the rate I started using back in January 2014, but in the past 7 years we've had this thing called "inflation" and I have decided to raise my rates.
The inflation rate in Canada per year during that time period was the following:
- 2014 - 1.91%
- 2015 - 1.13%
- 2016 - 1.43%
- 2017 - 1.60%
- 2018 - 2.27%
- 2019 - 1.95%
- 2020 - 2.30%*
* The 2020 number is an estimate from the Bank of Canada, and was expected to be worse due to COVID, but the price of oil dropped in 2020 due to lower fuel consumption and thus offset the higher costs of food and other commodities due to COVID. Exact numbers for Canada's inflation rate have not been released yet for 2020.
Okay so because inflation works a bit like compound interest, what it means is that the cost of living goes up with each year compounding the problem. If people don't raise their hourly wages once per year or once every so many years it is effectively like they are taking a pay cut each year and those pay cuts become cumulative.
If my previous hourly rate of $35 per hour for consulting work was to keep up with the previous year's inflation rate then it would look like this:
- 2015 - $35.67
- 2016 - $36.07
- 2017 - $36.59
- 2018 - $37.17
- 2019 - $38.02
- 2020 - $38.76
- 2021 - $39.65
And now you see why I have decided to raise my consulting rate to $40 CDN per hour, effective as of January 15th 2021.
So as you can see it is time for me to raise my rates. Whatever I was charging in 2014 is now 7 years out of date due to inflation.
Call it the upside to running my own business. I get to decide when I get to give myself a wage increase. Not my "boss". Not the government deciding when to increase the minimum wage. Me. I decide that my time is worth more.
And if you don't think your time is worth more too I invite you to check out the following graphic which compares the US Minimum Wage when Adjusted for Inflation.
Based on the chart the best time to be working a minimum wage job in the USA was 1968.
Americans who work minimum wage jobs are effectively earning less now than they were in 2009, 1968 or various other points in history.
And if I deserve a wage increase, why not YOU?
The companies that employ minimum wage earners can certainly afford to pay more, and any money spent through wages goes right back into boosting the economy. The more money people have to spend then the more money they are going to spend.
I also support a two-tier approach to minimum wage.
- Teenagers under the age of 18 - $15/hour.
- Adults, 18 years or older - $18/hour.
Why? Because adults have more expenses. Adults have rent/mortgages to pay and/or college tuition/university debt. Adults have kids to worry about. Car loans, fuel costs, electricity bills, etc.
That is one of the other thing's that has changed for myself personally. I have a son now. My bills are bigger than they used to be. My wife and I are browsing houses on real estate websites and eyeing the mortgage rate.
And I know from previous experience when I raised my consulting fee from $30/hour in 2013 to $35/hour in January 2014 that I didn't lose a single client, nor do I expect to lose any clients now either.
People get it.
People know that this is how inflation works. The cost of living goes up then so does the cost of employing people also needs to go up. People understand how this works because it affects them too.
"We're all in this together" is a phrase that has been used many times with respect to COVID, but it also applies to the economy. We're all in this economy together. If the price of wages doesn't go up to match inflation then the economy stagnates as people stop spending so much because they don't have enough money to spend more.
If the price of wages doesn't go up to match inflation then the economy stagnates as people stop spending so much because they don't have enough money to spend more.
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