CHAPTER 3D — THE OCCUPATION OF WINNIPEG AND SUBURBAN RESIDENTS, 1946–56

During the decade 1946-56, a significant alteration occurred in the composition of the metropolitan population, in terms of occupational status of residents of the component municipalities. The newcomers to the suburban municipalities during this decade included a larger percentage of persons in higher income occupations than did the population resident there in 1946; by the same token, the newcomers included a smaller percentage of persons in lower income occupations than did the population resident in 1946.

Thus in the major suburbs, (1) members of higher income occupations (comprised of persons in managerial, supervisory, professional work and salesmen), constituted 18.3% of the total population n 1946; of the newcomers to the major suburbs during the next ten years, however, this class comprised 30%.

Similarly, whereas members of lower income occupations (including truck drivers, laborers and factory hands) comprised 34% of the total suburban population in the period 1946-56. Hence by 1956, the population of the suburbs included proportionately more persons in higher income occupations, and proportionately fewer in lower income occupations than had been the case in 1946. The proportion of persons in middle income occupations (comprised of clerical workers and skilled tradesmen) remained approximately the same.

This development occurred in each of the five major suburbs for which the figures were compiled. The distribution of higher and lower income persons was not, of course, uniform throughout the suburbs in 1946, nor did it become so by 1956. Substantial differences existed between the suburbs in regard to the occupational distribution of their employed populations, and these differences still exist. Thus in 1946, whereas only 20.5% of the employed population of St. Boniface was in the higher income occupational group, 41.0% of the Fort Garry population was in this group; by 1956, members of the higher income group had become 23.1% of the St. Boniface population, but 51.0% of the Fort Garry population. Table 1 indicates the changed composition of the employed population of Winnipeg and the major suburbs (not including St. Vital).

While persons in the higher income occupations came to constitute an increasing proportion of the suburban populations, they comprised, by 1956, a smaller proportion of the City of Winnipeg's employed population. (See Table 1.) In each of the three City Wards, persons in the higher income category formed a smaller percentage of the ward's employed population in 1956 than in 1946.

Furthermore, in Wards 1 and 2 the proportion (and actual number) of persons in middle income occupations - clerical workers and skilled tradesmen - declined, while the proportion of persons in the lower income occupations - truck drivers, laborers, factory hands - increased. Thus in Ward 1, the category of clerical workers and skilled tradesmen fell from 34.3% to 32.1%, while the category of truck driver, laborer, factory hand, increased from 25.3% to 29.4% of the Ward's employed population. In Ward 2 the middle income group declined from 36.7% to 31.6%, while the lower income group rose from 40.0% to 45.6% of the Ward's employed population.

Although the population of Winnipeg increased by 26,048 between 1946 and 1956, the number of persons of working age, 15-64, actually declined. The whole of the population increase in this decade was accounted for by an increase in the number of children under 15, from 42,457 to 62,347, and persons over 65, from 18,018 to 27,727. Thus, while the City's total population rose by 26,048, the population within the working age limits declined by 3,551. This decline in civic population within the working age limits was reflected in a decline in the number of residents gainfully employed.

The above facts and figures indicate that there has been a considerable exodus from Winnipeg of persons in higher and middle income occupations, and that they have been replaced by persons of lower income occupations. Characteristically, persons of average or better than average incomes who had lived in older residential districts, moved out to newer districts, their old homes now being given over to persons of lower income. In Wards 1 and 3 where large numbers of new homes were built during the period, the settlement of average and higher income persons in these new districts substantially offset the decline in the number of such persons living in older districts; in Ward 2, however, where little space was available for new housing, there was no such offset to the exodus of average and higher income persons from older districts. In this Ward a good many ancient homes used as rooming and boarding houses were demolished during the period, to make way for office and commercial buildings and parking lots; the reduction in available accommodation brought a reduction in population.