A Manitoban who speaks only English makes an average of $49,080 compared to $54,450 for a person who speaks French and English. Someone working only in French makes an average of $31,650.

However, average salaries vary from province to province. For example, the income gap between a monolingual Anglophone and a bilingual person is larger in Ontario than in Manitoba. In our eastern neighbors, bilinguals earn about 19% more than those who only speak English and about 75% more than those who only speak French.

In contrast, the income gap in Saskatchewan is smaller than in Manitoba. For example, in this other Prairie province, a bilingual person earns about 8% more than a monolingual Anglophone and about 32% more than a monolingual Francophone.

Big differences between Manitoba cities

These differences are also found in Manitoba’s major cities. Depending on the municipality, the income differences are even quite pronounced. If in Winnipeg the gap between a monolingual Anglophone person and a bilingual person is only about 8%, in Thompson it reaches 19%.

Overall, a decreasing proportion of Manitobans speak French in the province, according to the 2021 census. However, the actual number of people who speak the language has increased.

There are 112,000 people in Manitoba who speak French. This is an increase of 2,000 people compared to 2016. However, the proportion of these people in the population has declined slightly., explained last week Bertrand Ouellet-Léveillé, senior analyst at Statistics Canada’s language statistics program. Specifically, nearly 8.5% of Manitobans can speak French.

In Winnipeg, the income gap between only French speakers and bilinguals is 47%. However, according to Bertrand Ouellet-Léveillé, the capital of Manitoba is one of the most bilingual cities in western Canada, with a bilingualism rate of 10%.

At the same time, we note that among Manitoba’s major cities, Winnipeg is the only one with a French-only population large enough to be included in the Statistics Canada data.

However, even in towns where French is modestly represented, such as Brandon, Steinbach, Winkler or Thompson, bilingual people still have higher incomes than monolingual Anglophones. The difference ranges from a few thousand dollars as with Brandon to more than $10,000 at Thompson.