Average Income in Canada

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Canada Job Market's Main Attributes

Since 1976, Statistics Canada has conducted a yearly income survey. The survey results provide a detailed picture of the job market for the whole country and its different regions. The data related to 2024 were released in April 2026. Thus, we have nearly 50 years of data to provide us with a view of how Canada’s job market has changed over time. It is also noteworthy that the employment rate (ratio of employed individuals to total population) has remained close to the 60% mark from 1976 to 2024, despite varying economic conditions.

We use only 5 data points for Canada, its most populous regions, provinces and cities, to gain insight into Canada's job market and income prospects of its residents.

Sources: Labour Force Survey - Average usual and actual hours worked in a reference week by type of work and Employee wages by occupation, monthly, unadjusted for seasonality.

The problem with the income survey is that its data are not up to date. Especially given historically large inflation and income growth, it is important to supplement our data from the income survey with up-to-date information. To this end, we use data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). We use average hourly wages and the average number of hours worked per week from the Labour Force Survey to calculate weekly income and annual salary. Annual salaries are calculated using the WOWA’s annual salary calculator.

Unlike the Income Survey, which provides information about income from all sources, the Labour Force Survey only gives information about employment income. As a result, the average incomes deduced from the Labour Force Survey and those from the Income Survey are not comparable. The Income Survey considers people whose income is solely from government transfers and investment income. This includes retirees and employment insurance recipients. As a result, the average income reported in the Income Survey is smaller than the average wage calculated from the Labour Force Survey data.

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It is also important to consider the median and average income earned by Canadian families. In this regard, every unattached individual is considered their own family.

Source: Canadian Income Survey

The table below shows the change in the median income, market income, government transfers and income taxes for economic families and unattached individuals over the past decade.

*In 2024 Constant Dollars
Source: Statistics Canada

Source: Statistics Canada, Distribution of market, total and after-tax income of individuals, Canada, provinces and selected census metropolitan areas

The average and median incomes in the table above are incomes that include the tax component. The after-tax income or net income is what an individual takes home after deducting the tax. The largest portion of net income in Canada comes from wages, while a sizable portion of income comes from government transfers and another sizable portion from investment returns. Statistics Canada considers the total income minus government transfers as market income.

Government transfers include Employment Insurance (EI), Old Age Security (OAS), Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS), Canada Child Benefit (CCB), Canada Greener Homes Grants and many other programs. You can use WOWA’s child benefit calculator to see how much support a family would receive for their children

Investment income includes rental income, interest income from savings accounts,Guaranteed Investment Certificates (GICs) or bonds. Dividends received from corporations and capital gains from the stock market or real estate investments are other types of investment income.

When we think about a job market, often the first metric which comes to mind is the average income. Average incomes are good indicators for comparing the affluence of different countries, different regions or different professions. Yet they are not a good indicator of a typical individual's earnings.

In each job market, a small portion of earners make large amounts of money, and their large incomes cause the average income to be much larger than the income of a typical individual. Therefore, to understand the typical income one might earn in that market, we should consider median incomes. The median income is the income of an individual who is making less than half of the workers while at the same time earning more than the other half of the workers.

We can consider the ratio of median income over average income as a measure of income inequality. The closer this ratio gets to 1, the higher income equality, while the smaller this ratio becomes, the higher income inequality.

From the above graph, we can conclude that among the major Canadian cities, Montreal has the lowest income inequality, with a median-to-average income ratio of 0.77. With a ratio of 0.66, Toronto has the highest income inequality.

Median Income (Excluding Zeroes) by Source

Source: Statistics Canada, Income of individuals by age group, gender and income source, Canada, provinces and selected census metropolitan areas

The median total income growth from 2019 to 2024 was $1,700, lower than the $2,300 growth from 2014 to 2019. Median government transfers fell from $7,100 in 2014 to $5,400 in 2019 and have stayed near that level since. Self-employment income was also notably lower in 2024 than in 2019 and 2014.

Central Canada includes Canada’s most populous provinces of Ontario and Quebec.

In 2024, families and unattached individuals had a median after-tax income of $116,100 in the Northwest Territories, $109,600 in Nunavut and $89,300 in the Yukon. The median after-tax income of all families and unattached individuals living in the territories was $104,900, well above the Canadian median of $75,500. Poverty rates across the North vary widely: Nunavut had the highest rate in Canada at 31.7% in 2024, while the rates in Yukon (11.8%) and the Northwest Territories (10.0%) were comparable to those in the provinces.