Decide what records survive and make them findable. Quiet work with long consequences.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Typical
$82,000
Starting or part time
$42,000
Senior or federal
$113,000
Job Bank's national median is $39.24 an hour, about $82,000 a year full time, which is high for the arts and heritage side of the job market. The reason is that most archivist jobs are inside governments, universities and hospitals, on public pay scales with pensions.
About $20 to $28 an hour
Roughly $42,000 to $58,000, often a term contract or a project
Early roles are usually archival assistant, project archivist on a specific collection, or a records position. Permanent jobs open slowly and people tend to stay in them.
About $54 an hour
Roughly $113,000 a year, Job Bank's high figure
Library and Archives Canada, provincial archives and big universities pay on public scales with pension, benefits and defined steps. Corporate records and information roles can pay more again.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a four year bachelor's degree at $7,000 a year followed by a two year master's at $10,000 a year, which is effectively required, plus association membership. The high end is the same two degrees at the top of their ranges. Both are yearly figures, so it is the six years together that set the total, not any single line. Conferences are usually covered by an employer once you are working, so they are not counted here.
Most people finish with student debt from two degrees. The trade is that the jobs at the end are stable and pensioned, which is not true of most other heritage work.
Pension
Public-sector and university plans, among the best in the country.
Predictable hours
Mostly weekday office hours, which is rare in this category.
Research time
Many roles include time to publish and present at conferences.
Job security
Once you hold a permanent archives position, turnover is very low.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
A degree, then a specialist master's, then work on real collections.
High school diploma
Grade 12
History, English and computer studies. Reading old handwriting comes later.
Bachelor's degree
4 years
History is the usual choice, but law, science, art history and Indigenous studies all lead into specialized archives.
Master's in archival studies
About 2 years
For example the Master of Archival Studies at the University of British Columbia, which is built from 18 credits of required core courses plus 30 elective credits and offers a dual option combined with library and information studies.
Co-op, internship or practicum
During the master's
Hands-on time in a working archive. Programs build this in, and it is how you get hired.
Project work, then a permanent post
1 to 5 years
Contracts on specific collections first, then a permanent job at a government, university or corporate archive.
History
Working with sources is literally the job.
English
You write descriptions that strangers have to understand in 50 years.
Computer studies
Most new records are born digital and need software to preserve.
French or another language
Federal archives work in both official languages, and many collections are not in English.
Nothing stops anyone from calling themselves an archivist, and no exam exists in Canada. In practice, a master's degree in archival studies is what employers ask for. The Association of Canadian Archivists, founded in 1975, represents the profession, publishes a competency framework setting out what archivists should be able to do, and lists the training programs across the country.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Digital preservation
Keeping email, databases and file formats readable for decades. The biggest shortage in the field.
Records management for companies
Private-sector information governance pays more than heritage work.
Audiovisual archives
Film, tape and audio decay. People who can handle them are scarce.
Indigenous archives work
Community-led collections, access protocols and returning records. Growing and badly understaffed.
A second language
French opens federal positions, and older Canadian records are in many languages.
Reading old handwriting
Courses in palaeography, the skill of reading historic script, make you useful immediately.
Basic coding
Scripting to move and check large sets of files saves months of work.
Volunteer time in any archive
Small local archives always need help and it counts as experience.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Appraisal in the morning: going through a donation of boxes or a hard drive and deciding what has lasting value and what gets destroyed. Then arrangement and description, which means putting records in order and writing the finding aid that lets someone locate one letter in 200 boxes. Some hours in the reading room helping researchers, some in storage checking temperature and damage. Digital work sits alongside all of it: checking files still open, copying them forward.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Only a small share of the records an organization creates is kept permanently. Deciding what that share is, and defending the decision, is the part of the job that takes a master's degree to learn.
Library and Archives Canada describes itself as the continuing memory of the federal government. It holds census records, First World War personnel files and Indigenous documentary heritage, and it is the largest single employer of archivists in the country.
A document written in 1850 is still readable. A file from 1995 may need software nobody runs any more. Keeping digital records alive means copying them forward on purpose, forever.
Last checked September 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in Canadian dollars, based on Government of Canada Job Bank wage data and published salary grids. They vary by province, employer and experience. Tuition is for domestic students.