Highlights from the 2006 census on income and earnings of Canadians

-The earnings of the average Canadian has stagnated over the last 25 years.

-In 2005, a person with a full-time job earned a median pre-tax salary of $41,348 - only about a buck a week more than what the average worker took home in 1980, when adjusted for inflation.

-While middle class workers experienced no real growth in earnings, those at the top end got a lot richer (16.4 per cent increase between 1980-2005) and those at the bottom got much poorer (20.6 per cent decline).

-The median family income in Canada was $66,343, ranging from a high of $90,865 in the Northwest Territories to $51,791 in Newfoundland and Labrador.

-All provinces and territories experienced some growth in median family income between 2000 and 2005 - with Nunavut (19.0 per cent), the Northwest Territories (10.4) and Alberta (10.0) leading the way. Ontario (1.4) and British Columbia (1.8) were below the national rate of 3.7 per cent.

-Almost 3.5 million Canadians, or 11.4 per cent of the population, live below what Statistics Canada calls the low-income cut off - a term others often refer to as the poverty line.

-Immigrants have fallen further behind Canadian-born workers. In 2005, immigrant men earned 63 cents for every dollar earned by a Canadian-born male worker. Twenty five years ago, the ratio was 85 cents. There was a more dramatic drop for immigrant women - 85 cents to 56 cents.

- The wage gap between young male and female workers has stalled after narrowing for years. The wage gender gap - unchanged from the last census - means women earned on average 85 cents for every dollar earned by a man.

-More than 600,000 Canadians earned $100,000 or more in 2005 - a 25 per cent increase from the last census. Statistics Canada does not reveal how many millionaires there are.

-The Wood Buffalo region of northern Alberta, which includes the oil sands capital of Fort McMurray, could stake a claim as Canada's richest community. Its median family income of almost $130,000 is the highest among any city with a population of more than 10,000.