Earnings income with the inclusion of the bottom 20% (maybe more) gives a distorted picture since this includes all manner of self employed and part time workers who may be working on an opportunistic basis or who entered or left the workforce part way through the year.

By Stats Canada definition this excludes EI income so excludes a significant amount of income for some persons who choose to work only part of the year.

More meaningful comparisons would be looking at earned incomes for persons who were employed fulltime.  That would tell a different story, especially around the bottom 20%.

If you want to look at everyone use Stats Can's "Total Income" numbers where the median is 1.5% higher than it is for "Employment Income".

It is wrong to imply a 'market failure' on incomes when you mix and match fulltime employment incomes with part time.