How useful are the wage reports at JobBank.gc.ca?
April 13, 2015 8:09 PM Subscribe
I was poking around the wage reports for various occupations provided by the government of Canada. I was wondering how useful the figures are for someone who is, say, negotiating a salary or trying to come up with a salary range to post a position.
For example, here's the data for the occupation "Administrative Officers." The site provides low, median, and high hourly wages for the position.
But how do things like benefits factor in? If they don't, and one was using this as a baseline for determining the salary for a specific position in one of the listed regions, how should they factor benefits and so on into their calculations?
And how useful are these figures for negotiating salaries, or for determining salary ranges for posted positions, in Canada? What caveats need to be kept in mind?
For example, here's the data for the occupation "Administrative Officers." The site provides low, median, and high hourly wages for the position.
But how do things like benefits factor in? If they don't, and one was using this as a baseline for determining the salary for a specific position in one of the listed regions, how should they factor benefits and so on into their calculations?
And how useful are these figures for negotiating salaries, or for determining salary ranges for posted positions, in Canada? What caveats need to be kept in mind?
Might be dependant on the job title, but glassdoor.com can also be used for salary information. In my field (software/web/app development) its our go-to source for wage information. Up until now, I didn't even know the jobbank site posted canadian salary info.
posted by cgg at 8:50 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by cgg at 8:50 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
Best answer: The federal govt / job bank stats are worthless. I know this because I have worked on compensation research projects over the years with local employers. I've never heard of them using HRSDC data. Employers typically rely on private companies like Hays and so on, but even then the data is imperfect.
For one thing, the federal government just does not understand occupations. When collecting data the tail wags the dog - the government will create a job description and then shoehorn different occupations into that description.
Groups like ICTC in Canada have tried to do a better job describing and classifying technology jobs, but due to their Ottawa base, it's heavily ICT/Enterprise IT-focused for example.
On top of that, even with the private consultancies that prepare (very good) wage surveys for use by employers, the data is skewed by region, typically Toronto.
So Vancouver employers have banded together to contribute their own local data for a Vancouver-centric wage survey in collaboration with companies like Hays.
Unfortunately, smaller markets (eg Victoria) don't qualify to collaborate with Hays and other big consultancies for a variety of reasons.
So salary data for many Canadian labour markets is not really well known. But smaller markets typically will pay lower, or differently, than larger markets.
Anyway, I guess you could use the HRSDC info as a benchmark of sorts, although it's not terribly accurate.
You could also figure that you as an FTE will cost your company about 100,000 a year including benefits and admin overhead and so on. The company will try to get it down below 100,000 - that's the margin you're after.
Take into consideration the cost of living in your labour market compared to other labour markets, and what you need to live with.
posted by Nevin at 11:40 PM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
For one thing, the federal government just does not understand occupations. When collecting data the tail wags the dog - the government will create a job description and then shoehorn different occupations into that description.
Groups like ICTC in Canada have tried to do a better job describing and classifying technology jobs, but due to their Ottawa base, it's heavily ICT/Enterprise IT-focused for example.
On top of that, even with the private consultancies that prepare (very good) wage surveys for use by employers, the data is skewed by region, typically Toronto.
So Vancouver employers have banded together to contribute their own local data for a Vancouver-centric wage survey in collaboration with companies like Hays.
Unfortunately, smaller markets (eg Victoria) don't qualify to collaborate with Hays and other big consultancies for a variety of reasons.
So salary data for many Canadian labour markets is not really well known. But smaller markets typically will pay lower, or differently, than larger markets.
Anyway, I guess you could use the HRSDC info as a benchmark of sorts, although it's not terribly accurate.
You could also figure that you as an FTE will cost your company about 100,000 a year including benefits and admin overhead and so on. The company will try to get it down below 100,000 - that's the margin you're after.
Take into consideration the cost of living in your labour market compared to other labour markets, and what you need to live with.
posted by Nevin at 11:40 PM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
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Most of the wage data comes from StatsCan's Labour Force Survey, which is described in detail here.
Individuals are asked for their "wage or salary, before taxes and other
deductions" (source) and I expect very few people would include benefits when responding to that.
posted by ripley_ at 8:40 PM on April 13, 2015