Contents
- Teacher employment in Canada statistics: Public-school educator workforce
- Teacher employment in Canada statistics: Workforce growth and regional staffing
- Teacher employment in Canada statistics: Age profile and labour-market context
- Teacher employment in Canada statistics: Teacher vacancies and vacancy ratios
- teacher employment in Canada: Canadian public-school educator compensation statistics
- Sources
Teacher employment in Canada statistics: Public-school educator workforce
Canada’s public elementary and secondary schools employed just over 422,000 educators in the 2023/2024 school year. The published total is rounded and describes educators, a broader group than teachers alone. Statistics Canada’s handbook-era definitions distinguish teachers from administrators and pedagogical support staff, both of which are included in the broader educator workforce. This matters when comparing workforce totals with teacher-specific vacancy measures: they describe related but different occupational populations. Source: Statistics Canada, “Elementary and secondary education: Rising student numbers drive record enrolment in Canadian schools, 2023/2024”; Source: Statistics Canada, “Section C: Elementary-secondary education”
The public-school educator workforce was 5.2% larger in 2023/2024 than in 2018/2019. For the single school year 2023/2024, a separate release reports a year-over-year increase of 2.1% in the number of public-school educators. These figures refer to different comparison periods: one spans 5 years, and the other describes the annual change. Together they indicate growth across both the longer comparison and the latest year covered by these observations. Source: Statistics Canada, “Elementary and secondary education: Rising student numbers drive record enrolment in Canadian schools, 2023/2024”; Source: Statistics Canada, “Rising enrolment drives compensation growth and capital investments in elementary and secondary schools in 2023/2024”
Teacher employment in Canada statistics: Workforce growth and regional staffing
The reported change in educator numbers varied between the 2 provinces singled out in the release. New Brunswick recorded a 6.3% increase in its public-school educator count in 2023/2024, while Alberta recorded a 3.0% increase. Statistics Canada identifies Alberta’s result as the largest among provinces, even though New Brunswick’s reported percentage was higher. The figures are provincial year-over-year changes, not counts of additional educators; no province-level totals are included here. Source: Statistics Canada, “Rising enrolment drives compensation growth and capital investments in elementary and secondary schools in 2023/2024”
| Jurisdiction | Change in public-school educator count, 2023/2024 |
|---|---|
| New Brunswick | 6.3% |
| Alberta | 3.0% |
These regional observations should be read as changes in educator counts, not as measures of teacher vacancies, staffing adequacy or the distribution of educators per student. The figures do not establish why the counts changed, and they do not provide a consistent province-by-province series for comparison. They offer a limited view of regional variation within the reported national workforce expansion. Source: Statistics Canada, “Rising enrolment drives compensation growth and capital investments in elementary and secondary schools in 2023/2024”
Teacher employment in Canada statistics: Age profile and labour-market context
Educators aged 55 and older accounted for 13.8% of the national teaching force in 2023/2024. The corresponding share was 12.9% in 2018/2019. Both observations use the age-55-and-older group and describe the national teaching force, giving a like-for-like pair of age shares across the 5-year period. They are percentages of the workforce, not counts of educators in that age group. Source: Statistics Canada, “Elementary and secondary education: Rising student numbers drive record enrolment in Canadian schools, 2023/2024”
| School year | Teaching force aged 55 and older |
|---|---|
| 2018/2019 | 12.9% |
| 2023/2024 | 13.8% |
A separate labour-market measure provides context for the wider population, not teachers specifically: the number of Canadians aged 55 and older in the labour force grew 178% since 2000, as reported through 2023. It should not be treated as a teacher-workforce growth rate. The occupational age shares above apply to the teaching force, while this longer-run figure concerns all Canadian labour-force participants aged 55 and older. Source: Statistics Canada, “Elementary and secondary education: Rising student numbers drive record enrolment in Canadian schools, 2023/2024”
Teacher employment in Canada statistics: Teacher vacancies and vacancy ratios
For elementary, secondary and kindergarten school teachers classified as NOC 4122, job vacancies more than doubled from 2,200 in 2018 to 5,050 in 2024. These are vacancy counts at the stated endpoints. They describe unfilled positions in the specified teacher occupation, rather than the number of educators employed in public schools. Source: Statistics Canada, “Demographic Echoes: Generational Waves and the Changing School-Age Population in Canada”
The same report’s vacancy-to-employment ratio compares vacancies with employed persons in the corresponding occupation. For teachers, the reported first-quarter ratios were 0.5% in 2018, 0.6% in 2019, 0.5% in 2020, 0.6% in 2021, 0.8% in 2022, 0.9% in 2023 and 0.9% in 2024. Each point refers to the first quarter of its year; the sequence is not an annual average. Source: Statistics Canada, “Demographic Echoes: Generational Waves and the Changing School-Age Population in Canada,” Chart 5 data table
| First quarter | Teacher vacancy-to-employment ratio |
|---|---|
| 2018 | 0.5% |
| 2019 | 0.6% |
| 2020 | 0.5% |
| 2021 | 0.6% |
| 2022 | 0.8% |
| 2023 | 0.9% |
| 2024 | 0.9% |
Source for all ratios: Statistics Canada, “Demographic Echoes: Generational Waves and the Changing School-Age Population in Canada,” Chart 5 data table. The report defines the ratio as vacancies divided by employed persons in the corresponding occupation.
The vacancy counts and ratios answer different questions. The endpoint counts show the number of advertised vacancies in 2018 and 2024; the quarterly ratio expresses vacancies relative to employment for the corresponding occupation. The supplied observations do not give a full annual vacancy-count series, so they do not support filling in intermediate counts. Nor do the data establish the reasons for changes in vacancies or ratios. Source: Statistics Canada, “Demographic Echoes: Generational Waves and the Changing School-Age Population in Canada”
teacher employment in Canada: Canadian public-school educator compensation statistics
Canadian public schools spent $54.9 billion on salaries, wages and benefits for instructional and educational services staff in 2023/2024, an increase of 8.7%. The release reports these financial figures in constant 2023/2024 dollars, adjusted for inflation, unless otherwise noted. The staff category is broader than teachers alone, so the figure should not be read as teacher-only pay or average teacher compensation. Source: Statistics Canada, “Rising enrolment drives compensation growth and capital investments in elementary and secondary schools in 2023/2024”
These compensation costs represented 72.9% of total school-board operating expenses in 2023/2024. This share describes the proportion of operating expenses associated with compensation for instructional and educational services staff; it is not a salary share for an individual educator. Source: Statistics Canada, “Rising enrolment drives compensation growth and capital investments in elementary and secondary schools in 2023/2024”
| Measure | 2023/2024 observation |
|---|---|
| Salaries, wages and benefits for instructional and educational services staff | $54.9 billion; up 8.7% |
| Share of total school-board operating expenses | 72.9% |
Source for both figures: Statistics Canada, “Rising enrolment drives compensation growth and capital investments in elementary and secondary schools in 2023/2024”. Financial amounts are in constant 2023/2024 dollars, adjusted for inflation, unless otherwise noted.
Provincial compensation changes also differed. In 2023/2024, expenditures for instructional and educational services staff rose 11.7% in New Brunswick and 3.2% in Alberta. Ontario recorded a 15.2% increase in compensation costs compared with the previous year; the release associates that temporary spike with agreements and retroactive salary payments. These are provincial expenditure changes for the broader staff category, not comparisons of teacher salary rates. The release’s 2023/2024 analysis excludes Newfoundland and Labrador. Source: Statistics Canada, “Rising enrolment drives compensation growth and capital investments in elementary and secondary schools in 2023/2024”
Sources
- Demographic Echoes: Generational Waves and the Changing School-Age Population in Canada
- Elementary and secondary education: Rising student numbers drive record enrolment in Canadian schools, 2023/2024
- Rising enrolment drives compensation growth and capital investments in elementary and secondary schools in 2023/2024
- Section C: Elementary-secondary education