Minimum wage is set to spike up Saturday and that has the local business community on their heels.

The wage will go up by an even dollar from $11.20 to $12.20 an hour province wide.

Okotoks & District Chamber of Commerce President Andrew Gustafson says along with provincial chambers that the increase isn't targeting the right scope that it's intended to.    

"The intent there is to create better living wages for people in our province but increasing the minimum wage doesn't do that exactly," he says. "There's not a direct correlate between minimum wage and living wage so we feel like this is a short-sided solution to the intended result and it's causing some suffering for businesses across the province."

Gustafson says with the wages set to increase again next year, you'll start to see businesses like restaurants unable to hire more staff and create new jobs, stretching the limits of their current employees that will see a trickle down effect to the customer.

"You increase the minimum wage and you might end up seeing waitresses or serving staff that are working 15 tables instead of ten. So we have to spread the resources out just a little bit more to manage overhead, that's a simple example and we've seen some evidence of that already across the province."

Alberta currently has the second lowest growth wage scale in the country but on the other side of the spectrum the province has the second highest net income rate in the country according to Gustafson and he says when 2018 rolls in that net income rate will change everything.

"Adding now up to the 15 dollars an hour minimum wage which is what the hike will be eventually, that's putting us way out of line, there's no other province in the country that's anywhere near that and we'd just say that's it's an unreasonable increase compared to the rest of the company."

Minimum wage will go up to $13.60 an hour in 2017 before closing out at $15.00 the following year.

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