Chapter 5
Graduates' labour market outcomes

View the most recent version.

Archived Content

Information identified as archived is provided for reference, research or recordkeeping purposes. It is not subject to the Government of Canada Web Standards and has not been altered or updated since it was archived. Please "contact us" to request a format other than those available.

Archived

This page has been archived on the Web.

Between 2000 and 2007, Canada's economy was stronger than that of the United States, with annual growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 2.5% compared with 2.2% for the United States. Consequently, employment in Canada grew at twice the pace of that of the United States, at an annual rate of 2% versus 1%.

In Ontario, annual employment growth was just under 2% between 2000 and 2007 and despite losses in manufacturing (-12%), overall employment grew by almost 13% in the province over the period.  Moreover, there were large employment gains in educational services (28%) and health care and social assistance (23%).

Also, since the mid-1970s, Canada has experienced a shift in employment from goods-producing industries to services industries, with professional, scientific and technical services as well as health care and social assistance among them. In fact, employment in professional, scientific and technical services doubled between 1987 and 2007 and grew by 60% in health care and social assistance. These sectors, along with educational services, all employ workers with high levels of educational attainment.¹

Nine out of ten doctoral graduates were working two years after graduation

In 2007, 86% of doctoral graduates from Ontario universities were employees² with an additional 4% being self-employed and 6% unemployed. Only 3% were out of the labour force, and when these graduates were excluded, the unemployment rate increased to 7%, slightly above the provincial rate of 6.4% (Appendix tables A.14.1 and A.15).

When employees and self-employed graduates were combined, the overall proportions of doctoral graduates who were working were comparable for Ontario (90%) and the other provinces (87%). 

There were also no differences in the proportion of working graduates across the various fields of study, or between Canadian- or foreign-born graduates overall, either for Ontario graduates or for other Canadian graduates (Appendix tables A.14.1 and A.14.2).

However, Canadian-born Ontario graduates in engineering and in computer, mathematics and physical sciences fared better than their foreign-born counterparts. Indeed, almost all Canadian-born graduates in those two fields of study (97% and 95%, respectively) were employed in 2007. Although their foreign-born colleagues also posted high rates of employment (85% in engineering and 87% in computer, mathematics and physical sciences), there was nevertheless a gap of 12 and 8 percentage points between the two groups.

Results were similar for graduates in engineering from the other provinces, with 95% of the Canadian-born being employed compared to 88% for the foreign-born. In contrast, proportionally more foreign-born graduates in the humanities (93%) were working two years after graduation than was the case for Canadian-born graduates (76%), a gap of 17 percentage points.  This result may be related to the fact that a much higher proportion of foreign-born students from that field of study graduated from a French language and literature program (16%) than was the case for Canadian-born graduates in the humanities (0.7%).  Furthermore, two-thirds of foreign-born graduates in the humanities were working in the educational services industry (66%) compared to slightly more than half of the Canadian-born graduates in that field of study (55%).

In addition, about one out of ten Ontario graduates in psychology and social sciences (9%) and in the humanities (10%) were working part-time. The rates of part-time employment in those fields of study were even higher for graduates in these fields from the rest of Canada, at 15% and 13%, respectively (Appendix table A.16).

The proportions of male and female graduates from Ontario universities who worked full-time were similar, at 81% and 78%, respectively. The proportions were also comparable for males and females within each field of study.  In contrast, a higher proportion of male graduates from universities outside Ontario were working full-time (81%) compared to women (73%).  This was mostly due to engineering graduates where there was a 19 percentage point difference (89% for men and 70% for women) (Appendix table A.14.3).

Graduates from the Class of 2000 who obtained their doctoral degree from a university outside Ontario were much more likely to be self-employed two years after graduation than was the case for 2005 graduates. In fact, their proportion was more than twice that of the later cohort, at 13% compared to 6%. Life sciences was the field of study which contributed the most to this result, since more than one out of five graduates in that field was self-employed in 2002 (21%). This can be explained by the fact that a much higher proportion of doctoral graduates from the Class of 2000 in that field of study had their own private practice compared to those of the two other cohorts.  Examples of professionals with private practices are: physicians, dentists, chiropractors, pharmacists or nutritionists.

All fields of study, except the humanities in Ontario, posted comparable proportions of Canadian- and foreign-born graduates who were employed in 2002. More than three-quarters of Canadian-born graduates in the humanities from Ontario institutions (79%) were employed, while this was the case for less than two-thirds of foreign-born doctoral recipients. Otherwise, all employment indicators were comparable between the two cohorts.

Compared to the Class of 2005, proportionally fewer 1995 doctoral graduates were working (about 85%) and more were unemployed (8% for Ontario and 7% for other provinces) or out of the labour force (4% and 6%, respectively). This was the case in all fields of study except in engineering and the humanities where the proportions of employed graduates were comparable between the two cohorts (Appendix table A.14.1).

The median earnings³ of Ontario graduates from the Class of 2005 were $5,500 higher than the median earnings of their counterparts who graduated in other provinces

Ontario doctoral graduates who worked full-time in 2007⁴ had median earnings of $67,500 compared to a median of $62,000 earned by graduates from the other provinces, an earnings gap of $5,500.  Ontario graduates were also paid more at the 25th percentile, at $51,480 compared to $45,161, and at the 75th percentile, at $80,000 compared to $76,000 (Appendix tables A.17.1 and A.17.2).

There were also substantial variations across fields of study. Life sciences graduates from Ontario were the lowest median earners ($58,000), followed by graduates in the humanities ($60,000) and those who received a doctorate in computer, mathematics and physical sciences ($63,000). Life sciences and computer, mathematics and physical sciences also posted the lowest earnings at the 25th percentile ($42,000 and $45,161, respectively), whereas humanities graduates had the lowest earnings at the 75th percentile, at $68,000.  Graduates in education and other fields of study ($80,000), engineering ($73,000) and psychology and social sciences ($71,000) all earned significantly more than the overall median. At the 75th percentile, graduates from education and other fields of study posted earnings that were $20,000 higher than the earnings reported by all graduates combined ($80,000).

The situation was slightly different for graduates who obtained their doctoral degree outside Ontario, for whom there was more earnings equality across fields of study. The earnings of graduates in computer, mathematics and physical sciences ($59,000), psychology and social sciences ($63,000) and the humanities ($61,500) were on par with the overall median. However, here again life sciences posted the lowest median earnings, at $50,400 in 2007, while engineering graduates ($69,000) and graduates in education and other fields of study ($78,000) had earnings that were significantly higher than those for graduates in other fields of study (Chart 10).

Chart 10 Median earnings of doctoral graduates who were employed full-time in 2007, by field of study, Class of 2005, Ontario and Canada without Ontario

Furthermore, the largest gaps between Ontario graduates and graduates from the other provinces were noted in psychology and social sciences and in life sciences, both at about $8,000. The earnings premium for Ontario graduates compared to those in the other provinces was slightly smaller for computer, mathematics, physical sciences and engineering, at around $4,000.

These earnings differentials reflect higher earnings in the overall population in Ontario in 2007 compared to most other provinces, with the exception of Alberta.⁵

Part of the earning gaps between fields of study can be explained by whether or not the graduates had postdoctoral intentions

The reasons for both the earnings advantage of graduates in education and other fields of study and the lower earnings of those in life sciences are twofold.

First, the median earnings of graduates in education and professional fields reflect their longer work experience. As discussed in Chapter 3, compared to graduates from other fields of study, graduates in education and other professional fields were far more likely to have been working before the start of their programs and proportionally fewer had taken their entire program on a full-time basis. Indeed, 53% of graduates from Ontario and 57% graduates from the other provinces in that field of study took their entire program full-time. In contrast, the vast majority of graduates in life sciences (89% in Ontario and 88% in the other provinces) had studied full-time for the entire duration of their programs. Moreover, a much higher proportion of graduates in the life sciences (58% for Ontario and 52% for other provinces) had advanced to doctoral studies directly from school, compared to graduates from education and other fields of study (21% and 26%, Ontario and other provinces, respectively).

Second, only a very small percentage of graduates in education and other fields of study planned to take a postdoctoral position when they graduated in 2005, choosing instead to return to a previous or current job or directly enter the labour force (93% for Ontario and 92% for the other provinces). This is in sharp contrast with graduates from the life sciences, where about seven out of ten students (69% and 68%, respectively) were planning to take a postdoctoral position upon graduation.⁶

This last point is of substantial importance given that a previous study showed that doctoral graduates who intended to take a postdoctoral position at the time of graduation posted an earnings gap of $18,000 with those who intended to directly join the labour force. The gap was largest in the life sciences, where graduates who planned to take a postdoctoral position had median earnings of only $45,000 compared to median earnings of $72,000 for those with no postdoctoral intentions.⁷ The NGS data do not identify whether or not the graduates were, in fact, in postdoctoral positions or not two years after graduation. However, as noted in Box 2 of Chapter 3, postdoctoral positions can be best described as somewhere between further studies and employment, and most graduates probably referred to it as employment.

More earnings equality between the sexes for Ontario graduates than for graduates in other provinces

There was little disparity in the median earnings of men ($68,000) and women ($67,000) in the case of Ontario graduates in 2007. Two fields of study contributed to the overall gender equality. Women's earnings were higher than men's in computer, mathematics and physical sciences ($65,000 and $60,242, respectively) and in life sciences ($60,000 and $52,000 respectively) (Appendix table A.17.1). 

On the other hand, women graduates from other provinces posted median earnings that were significantly below those of their male counterparts, namely $60,000 compared to $65,000. The gap was largest in education and other fields of study ($9,000), humanities ($9,000), engineering ($8,000), and in psychology and social sciences ($8,000). At the median, women earned $8,000 more than men in life sciences, while earnings were comparable between men and women in computer, mathematics and physical sciences.

The earning advantage of women — or their earning equality with men — in life sciences and in computer, mathematics and physical sciences may be related in part to the relatively higher proportions of male graduates who intended to take postdoctoral positions — which generally offer lower salaries — in these fields of study.

Likewise, the median earnings of foreign-born graduates from Ontario were comparable to that of their Canadian-born counterparts, at $65,000 and $68,000, respectively. This was the case in all fields of study except the humanities, where foreign-born graduates earned $11,000 less than Canadian-born graduates, and engineering where foreign-born graduates earned $8,000 less than Canadian-born graduates (Appendix table A.18).

Whether they obtained their degree in Ontario or outside the province, doctoral graduates who lived in Canada two years after graduation earned substantially more than their colleagues who lived in the United States in 2007⁸. The differences in earnings were $11,000 for Ontario graduates and more than $15,000 for graduates from other provinces. Since the majority of graduates who intended to move to the United States at the time of graduation also intended to take a postdoctoral position, this suggests that such earning disparities may well be related to their postdoctoral intentions (Appendix table A.19.1).

Engineering graduates earned more in 2002 than in 2007

Measured in 2007 constant dollars, median earnings varied greatly from one cohort to another, depending on the indicator analysed. When all fields of study were combined, earnings were comparable between 2005 and 2000 graduates, but much lower for 1995 graduates, a deficit of about $8,000 (Appendix table A.17.1).

On the other hand, when considering individual fields of study, Ontario graduates from the Class of 2005 posted higher earnings than their counterparts from the two previous cohorts in all fields except computer, mathematics and physical sciences, where earnings were comparable across all three cohorts, as well as in engineering where 2000 graduates had the highest earnings of the three cohorts.  Ontario engineering graduates from the Class of 2000 earned median earnings of $85,800 in 2002. This was nearly $13,000 higher than their 2005 counterparts and $18,000 more than graduates from the Class of 1995.

This situation may very well be related to the explosive growth in the high-tech sector during the late 1990s followed by the subsequent meltdown of the early 2000s, coupled with the decline in manufacturing employment, particularly since 2005. Indeed, a higher proportion of Ontario engineering graduates were employed by the manufacturing sector in 2002 (30%) than was the case in 2007 (19%) and half of those were working in the computer and electronic products and equipment manufacturing sector (Appendix table A.22). Moreover, median earnings for recent doctoral graduates in the manufacturing sector decreased by nearly $30,000 during the five-year period, dropping from $109,000 in 2002 to $80,000 in 2007.

In contrast, one-third of the 2005 engineering graduates were employed in the educational services sector (34%) — the vast majority as university professors — compared to just one-quarter of those who received their diploma in 2000 (25%). Furthermore, Ontario engineering graduates who were employed full-time by a university in 2007 earned $25,000 less than their colleagues working in the private sector, at $55,000 compared to $80,000, respectively.

Earnings were generally comparable for male and female graduates in previous cohorts who worked full-time, though they varied by field of study

Ontario women from the Class of 2000 posted median earnings that were statistically similar to those of their male counterparts in four fields of study out of six. Women earned more than men in psychology and social sciences ($68,000 compared to $62,000), whereas men earned more in education and other fields of study, namely $78,000 compared to $67,000. In other provinces, male graduates from 2000 also earned significantly more than women in education and other professional fields of study, the earnings gap standing at $13,000. A closer look at the detailed occupations shows that men from that field of study tended to be concentrated in higher-paying jobs than women. Examples of those occupations are: business senior managers, financial auditors or investments professionals.

With the exception of one field of study, earnings between males and females were also comparable when it came to the Class of 1995. In the rest of Canada, women in computer, mathematics and physical sciences earned $8,000 more than their male counterparts two years after graduation (Appendix table A.17.1). It is not clear whether this wage differential is due to specific choices of occupations or sector of employment.

Neither was there any wage gap between Canadian-born and foreign-born graduates in the Class of 2000 when all fields of study were combined (Appendix table A.18). Furthermore, the only differences between graduates who lived in Canada or the United States in 2002 were observed in engineering for Ontario graduates and in life sciences for graduates from the other provinces. Engineering graduates from Ontario who were living in the United States in 2002 earned about $112,000 compared to $83,000 for graduates living in Canada. In contrast, graduates from the life sciences from the rest of Canada who lived in Canada earned about $8,000 more than their counterparts who lived south of the border.⁹

Education-job skill match/mismatch

Other indicators can also shed light on the labour market outcomes of these highly-qualified graduates. The indicators below pertain to how well doctoral graduates integrate into the Canadian labour market. One of these indicators is the match or mismatch between the educational requirement for the job and the education attained by the graduate, or whether or not the graduate is overqualified.

Two definitions were used to identify overqualified individuals. The first is a self-reported indicator of whether or not the graduates felt overqualified for their current position. The second was derived by matching the respondent's educational attainment (i.e. doctorate degree) to the level of education they said was necessary to obtain the job. If less than a doctoral degree was required for their employment, they were classified as being overqualified. The results are shown in Chart 11 below.

Overall, and for each field of study, fewer employed graduates considered themselves to be overqualified (subjective definition: self-reported indicator) than reported needing less than a doctoral degree to obtain their current job (objective definition: derived variable comparing job requirements to level of education).  This apparent paradox may be due to the fact that graduates were asked the level of education needed to get the job as opposed to the level at which they were actually working.

Less than one in five Ontario graduates (17%) felt that they were overqualified, compared to 27% who reported that less than a doctoral degree was needed to obtain the job they held. Moreover, these proportions were significantly lower than the proportions for graduates from the other provinces, which stood at 20% and 32%, respectively.

There were notable differences across fields of study. On both definitions, Ontario graduates in education and other professional fields were the most likely to feel or be overqualified (28% and 50%, respectively), followed by engineering graduates (27% and 37%, respectively).

Outside Ontario, however, engineering graduates were the most likely to be overqualified on both definitions (30% and 45%, respectively). They were followed by graduates in the humanities, with proportions of 25% and 43%.

In contrast, life sciences as well as computer, mathematics and physical sciences consistently posted low proportions of overqualified graduates on both definitions, regardless of the province of graduation, with proportions ranging from 13% to 25%. As seen earlier, these graduates were also the most likely to have plans for postdoctoral work upon graduation. This may have resulted in a better match between the requirements of the position and the graduates' qualifications two years after graduation.  

Chart 11 Proportion of doctoral graduates overqualified for current job, defined using two different definitions, by field of study, Class of 2005, Ontario and Canada without Ontario

Although the proportions of graduates who felt that they were overqualified for their jobs were similar across the three cohorts of graduates, the rates of objective overqualification decreased between 1997 and 2007. The incidence of mismatch between job requirements and the graduates' level of schooling was the lowest in the Class of 2005 (27% for Ontario and 32% for other provinces) and the highest for the Class of 2000 (51% and 46%, respectively). In 1997, about one-third of doctoral graduates had more education than their job required, the rates standing at 34% for Ontario graduates and 37% for graduates from the other provinces (Appendix table A.20).

The higher rates of objective overqualification for 2000 graduates compared to their 2005 counterparts were more prominent in specific industry sectors. In 2002, the rate of overqualification in the educational services industry was twice the rate of 2007 (37% and 18%, respectively). There was also a differential of 18 percentage points in the professional, scientific and technical services industry (61% and 43%) and of 19 percentage points in the health care and social assistance industry (54% and 35%). It is unclear if, and how, the economic slowdown of 2001 may have affected the labour market opportunities of the 2000 doctoral graduates. While employment had improved by the end of 2002, some lingering effects may have persisted when it came to the quality of available jobs.

In contrast, there was no significant difference in the overall proportion of graduates who felt overqualified (subjective definition) across the three cohorts.

With respect to earnings, not all overqualified workers were penalized as might have been expected according to an earlier study in which overqualified doctoral graduates posted lower earnings than their "not overqualified" colleagues.¹⁰ In fact, overall median earnings between those considering themselves to be overqualified and other graduates were similar (Appendix table A.21.1). Ontario graduates who perceived themselves as being overqualified for their job had median earnings of $66,000 compared to the $67,500 for their "not overqualified" colleagues. In the case of graduates from the other provinces, median earnings were also comparable, at $60,000 and $63,000 respectively.

Moreover, results in some fields of study were not consistent with the proportion of graduates who reported being overqualified. Although earning gaps between overqualified and "not overqualified" workers in education and other fields of study were significant at $9,000 for Ontario graduates and $15,000 for graduates from the other provinces, this was not the case for engineering graduates who instead posted similar median earnings despite relatively high proportions of overqualified graduates (Appendix table A.21.1).

On the other hand, the largest earning gap of $16,000 was found among Ontario graduates in the humanities even though they posted the lowest share of overqualified workers (11%).

Except for education and the humanities, no other field of study in either Ontario or the other provinces showed a difference in median earnings conditional on overqualification.

Earnings were also comparable for graduates from the Class of 1995 whether or not they reported being overqualified. On the other hand, overqualified Ontario graduates from the Class of 2000 earned about $7,000 less than their "not overqualified" colleagues. No specific pattern emerged when fields of study were examined (Appendix table A.20).

The majority of graduates were employed by the public sector, with most of them in educational services

Another indicator of the labour market integration of doctoral graduates is the matter of which economic sectors employ them.

The main sector of employment for doctoral holders in Canada, as in most other OECD countries, is the public sector.¹¹ Data from the 2006 Census show that two-thirds of doctorate holders who were working full-year full-time in 2005 were employed by the public sector (67%). This share of workers was distributed across educational services (47%), health care and social assistance (11%) and public administration (9%). Doctoral holders working in the private sector were mostly active in the professional, scientific and technical services industry (15%) and in manufacturing (6%), while the remaining doctorate recipients were found in a variety of other industries.

Recent NGS doctoral graduates, for their part, found employment in the public sector in much higher proportions than was the case for graduates who have been in the work force for longer periods of time, with their shares standing at 78% for Ontario and 75% for graduates from the other provinces. Moreover, more than half were employed in educational services (58% for Ontario and 55% for the other provinces) with the vast majority of them working in a university (88% and 86%, respectively). Employment in educational services was highest among the humanities (83% and 71%, respectively) and among graduates in education and other fields of study (75% and 77%, respectively), and lowest among engineering graduates (34% and 37%, respectively) (Table 6).

Other sectors that were significant employers of doctoral graduates were professional, scientific and technical services (11% for Ontario graduates and 14% for graduates from the other provinces), health care and social assistance (13% for both groups of graduates), public administration (7% for both groups) and manufacturing (4% for both).

After educational services, engineering graduates were mostly employed in professional, scientific and technical services (29% and 33%, respectively); this was also the case for graduates in computer, mathematics and physical sciences (16% and 21%).

Compared to their counterparts who graduated in the other provinces, Ontario graduates from the life sciences were much more likely to be employed in health care and social assistance (26% compared to 15%), while the proportion of psychology and social sciences graduates found in the health care and social assistance sector was much smaller for Ontario graduates than it was for their counterparts from other provinces (20% compared to 34%).

Table 6 Distribution of doctoral graduates by field of study and sector of employment, Class of 2005, Ontario and Canada without Ontario

Notwithstanding their location of study, men were twice as likely as women to be employed in professional, scientific and technical services whereas women were more likely to work in health care and social assistance (Appendix table A.22).

Graduates who lived in Canada were distributed in comparable proportions to those who lived in the United States in three of the five economic sectors. That said, a higher proportion of Ontario graduates who lived in the United States worked in professional, scientific and technical services (17%) than was the case for those who lived in Canada (10%). In the case of graduates from other provinces, the proportion working in the educational services in the United States (64%) was 10 percentage points higher than in Canada (54%) (Appendix table A.23).

As seen earlier, proportionately more graduates from the two previous cohorts were working in the manufacturing sector and fewer in educational services than was the case in 2007 (Appendix table A.22). These results reflect the profound structural changes in the Canadian economy during the 10 years covered in this study, particularly in Ontario. Between 1997 and 2002, full-time employment in manufacturing grew by 17% in Ontario and by 11% in the rest of the country. In contrast, between 2002 and 2007, manufacturing full-time employment decreased by 14% in Ontario and by 9.5% in other provinces. During the same period, Ontario full-time jobs in educational services grew by 25.8%, double the growth observed in other provinces (12.6%).¹²

Summary

Nine out of ten doctoral graduates from the Class of 2005 were working two years after graduation, and when employed workers and self-employed graduates are combined, the overall proportions of graduates who were working were comparable for Ontario (90%) and the other provinces (87%).

The median earnings of Ontario graduates from the Class of 2005 were $5,500 higher than the median earnings of their counterparts who graduated in other provinces. There were substantial variations across fields of study. Life sciences graduates were the lowest earners, at $58,000 in Ontario and $50,400 in other provinces, while graduates in education and other fields of study were the highest earners, at $80,000 in Ontario and $78,000 in other provinces. 

Part of the earnings gap between these two fields of study can be explained by whether or not the graduates had postdoctoral intentions. Indeed, only a very small percentage of graduates in education and other fields planned to take a postdoctoral position when they graduated in 2005, choosing instead to return to a previous or current job or directly enter the labour force (93% for Ontario and 92% for the other provinces). This is in sharp contrast with graduates from the life sciences, where about seven out of ten students (69% and 68%, respectively) were planning to take a postdoctoral position at graduation.

Furthermore, doctoral graduates who lived in Canada two years after graduation earned substantially more than their colleagues who lived in the United States in 2007. The differences in earnings were $11,000 for Ontario graduates and more than $15,000 for graduates from other provinces. Since the majority of graduates who intended to move to the United States at the time of graduation also intended to take a postdoctoral position, this suggests that such earnings disparities may also be related to their postdoctoral intentions.

While there was no disparity in the median incomes of men and women in the case of Ontario graduates, women graduates from other provinces posted median earnings that were $5,000 below those of their male counterparts.

Engineering graduates earned more in 2002 than in 2007. This situation is likely related to the explosive growth in the high-tech sector during the late 1990s followed by the subsequent meltdown of the early 2000s, coupled with the decline in manufacturing employment, particularly since 2005.

The incidence of mismatch between job requirements and the graduates' level of schooling was lowest for the Class of 2005 (27% for Ontario and 32% for other provinces) and the highest for the Class of 2000 (51% and 46%, respectively). This may be attributed to the economic slowdown of 2001 which may have affected the labour market opportunities of the 2000 doctoral graduates. While employment had improved by the end of 2002, some lingering effects may have persisted when it came to the quality of available jobs.

The majority of doctoral graduates from the Class of 2005 were employed in the public sector, with their shares standing at 78% for Ontario and 75% for graduates from the other provinces. Moreover, more than half were employed in educational services (58% for Ontario and 55% for the other provinces) with the vast majority of those working in a university (88% and 86%, respectively).

Proportionately more graduates from the previous two cohorts were working in the manufacturing sector and fewer in educational services than was the case in 2007. These results reflect the profound structural changes in the Canadian economy, and particularly in Ontario, during the 10 years covered by this study.

---

Notes:

1. Statistics Canada. 2009. The Canadian Labour Market at a Glance, 2007. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 71-222-X. Ottawa, Statistics Canada, 127 p.
2. This term refers to a person who works for pay for others as opposed to the self-employed.
3. All earnings, whether the graduate lived in Canada or the United States, were converted to Canadian dollars.
4. Includes employees and self-employed workers.
5. Statistics Canada. Table 282-0074 – Labour Force Survey Estimates (LFS), Wages of Employees by Job Permanence, Union Coverage, Sex and Age Group, Annual (Current Dollars Unless Otherwise Noted), CANSIM (database).
6. Although Ontario graduates in computer, mathematics and physical sciences posted a higher proportion of graduates who planned to take a postdoctoral position than life sciences graduates, the difference was not statistically significant.
7. Desjardins, Louise and Darren King. 2011. Expectations and Labour Market Outcomes of Doctoral Graduates from Canadian Universities. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 81-595-M089. Ottawa. Statistics Canada and Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, 58 p.
8. All graduates' earnings, whether they lived in Canada or the United States, were converted to Canadian dollars.
9. Although Appendix table A.19.1 shows relatively large earnings gaps in computer, mathematics and physical sciences between residents of Canada and residents of the United States, these were not statistically different.
10. See Desjardins and King for earlier results.
11. OECD/UNESCO. Institute for Statistics/Eurostat Careers of Doctorate Holders (CDH) project. (accessed April 2, 2012)
12. Statistics Canada. Table 282-0008 – Labour Force Survey Estimates (LFS), by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), Sex and Age Group, Annual, CANSIM (database).