If you’re looking for a Canadian-themed joke this Labor Day, look past Ryan Reynolds blaming the 1980s on the Cuban Missile Crisis — was he drunk? — and focus instead on senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s claim that if “you want to achieve the American Dream, well, you should move to Canada because it’s twice as likely there.”
That argument is so laughably wrong, even the Canadians disagree with it. A 2024 study by the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute compared the per capita income for the Canadian provinces and US states and found the Canadians are a little behind:
Only one Canadian province—Alberta— appears in the top half of all 60 jurisdictions, with the other Canadian provinces accounting for nine of the ten jurisdictions ranked at the bottom. The four Atlantic Canadian provinces rank last among the 60 jurisdictions.
It gets worse. The study also found changes in median income since 2010 only made the gap between the US and Canada larger:
Only one Canadian jurisdiction is in the top half of growth in earnings after 2010. British Columbia leads Canadian provinces with a $7,732 increase in earnings per person between 2010 and 2022, yet it is ranked 19th overall in terms of the value of the increase.
British Columbia was respectable, but look at the bottom of the chart. Whatever Alberta is doing, they should stop. Out of sixty jurisdictions, their economic standing dropped from 13th to 51st in just twelve years!
Can you imagine a young person following El-Sayed’s advice and moving to Alberta in 2010? They might be hard working, but with Alberta committing economic suicide, they’ll have a hard time getting ahead. More from the study:
Albertans, who out-earned Texans in 2010, fell behind by 2022 as a result of negative income growth in Alberta combined with strong growth in Texas, Alberta’s lead of $3,423 per person became a deficit with Texas of $5,254 by 2022.
Which begs the question, what exactly have they been doing up there? Not investing in their workers, for starters. A more recent Fraser Institute study found that Canada’s business investment per worker declined from 87.3% of US levels in 2014 to just 54% in 2024:
The result is that Canadian workers fell further behind:
Simply put, this section demonstrates that Americans have experienced greater overall improvement in their standard of living and incomes compared to Canadians, thus far into the 21st century. However, it is important to recognize that this was not a foregone outcome. During the years leading up to 2014, Canada outpaced the United States in terms of GDP per person growth and median employment income growth. But over the decade following 2014, outcomes in Canada began to stagnate while they continued to improve in the United States, and any progress Canada had made relative to its southern neighbour was ultimately wiped out.
So while Ryan Reynolds moves back to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War, young people looking for good jobs and opportunities would be better off staying right here in the good old USA. We have our problems, but losing an “Economic Dream” contest with Canada isn’t one of them.