The Average Canadian Who Files Insolvency Is 46, Earns Half What You Think, and Lost Their Job First

The average Canadian who filed insolvency in 2024 was 46 years old, earned $3,089 a month, had $15,142 in total assets, and in 45% of cases had just lost their job.

The Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy publishes a Consumer Debtor Profile every few years — the 2024 edition is current. It contains actual demographic and financial data on who files: age, income, assets, debt type, and trigger. The profile doesn’t look like the person described in personal finance culture. It looks like a below-median-income Canadian who ran out of cushion when something broke.

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The Actual Profile

Age: 46

The median age of a Canadian consumer insolvency filer is 46. The largest single age group filing is 35–44, followed by 45–54. Together, these two cohorts represent peak working-age Canadians — people who have been in the labour force for 15–30 years.

This is not a story about young people making financial mistakes early in their careers. It is a story about middle-aged Canadians hitting a wall after years of managing. By 46, most have children, mortgages or rent obligations, car payments, and the accumulated debt of a household that has been running a slow deficit for years without a dramatic single moment of crisis.

Household composition: mostly single

42% of filers are single, 37% are married or in a common-law relationship, 18% are divorced or separated. The single-filer concentration matters: single-income households have no backup when income drops. There is no partner’s income to cover essentials while you regroup. The margin between manageable and unmanageable is a single paycheque.

Prior insolvency history: 20% have filed before

One in five filers has been through this before. This is not a sign of gaming the system — the discharge waiting periods are long and credit damage is severe. It is a sign that the underlying conditions that produce insolvency (income below the level required to service debt accumulated over a lifetime) are structural rather than situational for a meaningful share of filers.

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The Income Gap Is Bigger Than Most People Realize

Median monthly household income: $3,089

That’s $37,068 per year. The national median household income is approximately $7,050 per month — $84,600 annually. The average insolvency filer earns 56% below the national median.

To put this in context: the median insolvency filer’s income falls below the low-income cutoff for a family of two in most major Canadian cities. These are not people who were earning good incomes and spent recklessly. They are people for whom the gap between income and the cost of living was already narrow before a single shock made it negative.

At $3,089 per month, after housing costs, transportation, food, and utilities in any Canadian city, there is almost no margin. The credit card balance doesn’t grow because of restaurants and vacations. It grows because the car needed brakes, the phone bill didn’t get paid for two months, and someone was sick for three weeks and fell short on hours.

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The Asset Gap Is Almost Total

Median total assets: $15,142

The national median net worth is approximately $680,200 per household. The median insolvency filer has $15,142 in total assets — not net worth, total assets. Everything they own, combined, before any debts are subtracted.

The difference is not small. It is a 97.8% gap between what the typical filer has and what the typical Canadian household has.

The 14% homeownership rate among filers is perhaps the single most clarifying figure in the entire dataset. Two thirds of Canadians own their homes. One in seven insolvency filers does. The people filing insolvency are overwhelmingly renters — people who have not accumulated equity and have no significant asset base to draw on when their finances deteriorate.

The homeownership gap also explains why the consumer proposal — which protects assets including home equity — has risen to 79% of all insolvency filings. Most filers don’t have equity to protect. For those who do, the proposal is urgently important.

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The Debt Is Mostly Credit Cards — at 20% Interest, on a $37K Income

The debt profile of the average insolvency filer is dominated by consumer credit — precisely the products that carry the highest interest rates.

Credit cards: 89% of filers carry credit card debt, median balance $13,359

Nearly nine in ten people who file insolvency have credit card debt. The median balance is $13,359 — not enormous in absolute terms, but catastrophic when carried at 19.99–29.99% on a $3,089 monthly income. At minimum payments, $13,359 at 20% interest requires over 30 years to clear and costs more than $30,000 total. On a $3,089 monthly income, keeping up with minimum payments means having nothing left for emergencies — which guarantees the next shock breaks the budget.

Bank loans: 57% of filers, median $20,000

More than half of filers have personal bank loans outstanding, with a median balance of $20,000. These are often consolidation loans taken out to manage earlier credit card debt — loans that temporarily reduced payments but added another fixed obligation to a budget with no slack.

Finance company loans: 51% of filers, median $13,478

Finance company loans — the payday lenders, rent-to-own companies, and subprime auto financiers — show up in half of all insolvency cases. These products fill the gap when banks won’t lend, and they do so at rates that accelerate debt accumulation rather than resolve it.

Tax debt (CRA): 38% of filers, median $6,440

More than a third of insolvency filers owe money to the Canada Revenue Agency. This includes unpaid income tax, HST/GST remittances from self-employment, and benefit repayments. CRA debt is particularly dangerous because the CRA has collection powers that private creditors don’t — including the ability to garnish wages without a court order. Many filers reach insolvency specifically because CRA collection activity has made it impossible to keep up with everything else.

Student loans: 17% of filers, median $11,702

Notably, only 17% of filers carry student loan debt — far below what public discourse about student debt would suggest. Student debt is a real problem, but it is not the primary driver of insolvency in Canada. The data points to consumer credit — credit cards, personal loans, and finance company debt — as the dominant mechanism.

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What Actually Broke the Budget

This is the section where the data most clearly diverges from popular assumption.

45% — Loss of income

The leading cause of insolvency in Canada, by a wide margin, is income loss. This includes job loss, reduced hours, contract non-renewal, seasonal employment ending without return, and self-employment income collapsing. Nearly half of all filers reached the point of insolvency not because they accumulated too much debt, but because the income they were using to service existing debt disappeared.

This matters because it reframes the intervention point. Debt management alone doesn’t solve a problem caused by income loss. What solves it — temporarily or permanently — is either restoring income or reducing the debt burden to a level the reduced income can sustain. Consumer proposals do the latter, buying time for the former.

20% — Medical reasons

One in five Canadians who file insolvency cites illness, injury, or disability as their primary trigger.

Canada has universal healthcare coverage for physician and hospital services. It does not have universal coverage for:

• Prescription drugs (in most provinces)
• Dental care
• Vision care
• Mental health treatment beyond emergency settings
• Long-term care
• Income replacement when illness prevents working

A Canadian with cancer, a serious cardiac event, an acute mental health crisis, or a disabling injury will have their surgery covered. They will not have their income covered. They will not have their drug costs fully covered. They will not have their spouse’s lost income covered when that spouse becomes a caregiver. They will have to borrow — through the illness, through the recovery, through the months before disability benefits begin — and for one in five people, that borrowing becomes the debt that breaks them.

The 20% medical figure is, in a country with universal healthcare, an indictment of a system that covers the acute cost while leaving the household to absorb everything else.

11% — Relationship breakdown

Divorce and separation are the third leading trigger. The financial mechanism is straightforward: one household income becomes two separate households, each with their own fixed costs. The math rarely works without debt. Legal fees compound it. Asset division disputes delay resolution. One or both parties borrows heavily during the transition period and cannot recover.

7% — Supporting others financially

Seven percent of filers reached insolvency while financially supporting someone else — a dependent adult child, an aging parent, a sibling in crisis. These are people who borrowed not for themselves but to hold someone else above water, and went under in the attempt.

6% — Business failure

Only 6% of consumer insolvency filers cite business failure as their primary trigger — a figure that consistently surprises people who assume entrepreneurship is the main driver of personal insolvency. It matters, but it is far down the list.

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The Person in This Data Isn’t a Different Category of Person

A 46-year-old earning $37,000, renting, $13,000 in credit card debt at 20%, gets laid off. For three months they manage — EI covers part of the income, the card covers the gap. New job arrives at 80% of the old salary. The math that was barely working at the old income doesn’t close at the new one. Minimum payments that were manageable aren’t anymore. Two years later they’re in a trustee’s office.

The credit card debt that shows up in 89% of filings is not the cause. It’s the mechanism of a cashflow crisis that started somewhere else — usually with income. It grew at 20% annually while the income to clear it never returned. The typical filer is not someone who bought things they couldn’t afford. They’re someone who borrowed to cover things they needed, after the income to cover those things disappeared.

The OSB publishes this data openly. The national insolvency tracker includes the monthly filing counts and the current Financial Stress Index. The per-city breakdown by insolvency rate is in the city rankings piece. The Licensed Insolvency Trustee initial consultation — the only professional in Canada licensed to administer proposals and bankruptcies — is free through the OSB’s national registry.

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Data source: Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy, Canadian Consumer Debtor Profile 2024. Income comparison: Statistics Canada Table 11-10-0190-01. Asset comparison: Statistics Canada Survey of Financial Security. All figures are medians unless noted.