Analyse, formulate and improve materials for industry, government or a research lab.
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Programs in the fields this career usually comes through. Each has its own page: what it takes to get in, the courses you need and what it costs.
The median pay is about $80,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $50,000 at the lower end to about $137,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
4 to 6 years after high school, on the usual route.
$28,000 to $40,500 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
It depends where you work. You need a licence, certificate or registration in Quebec. Elsewhere there is none to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Moderate demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$80,000
Lower end
$50,000
Upper end
$137,000
Job Bank's national median is $38.46 an hour, about $80,000 a year at 40 hours a week. The lower and upper ends are Job Bank's low and high wages for everyone in the group, $24 and $65.93 an hour.
$43.74 an hour
The median in Alberta, the highest in Canada
Newfoundland and Labrador ($43.69) and Saskatchewan ($42.97) are close behind, Ontario sits at $39.49 and Prince Edward Island is lowest at $36.41. Environmental and food testing labs are common entry-level employers.
Roughly, all in
$28,000 to $40,500
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a four year chemistry degree at the cheaper provincial rates plus your own goggles and lab coat for school. The high end is the same degree at higher tuition plus registration as a Professional Chemist, which only some provinces offer and which costs a few hundred dollars a year. A master's degree or a doctorate usually comes with a funded stipend, so graduate study adds close to nothing in tuition and is not included in the high figure. Chemistry is one of the cheaper science degrees to finish and one of the more employable straight out of a bachelor's.
Chemistry is one of the cheaper science degrees to finish, and one of the more employable straight out of a bachelor's.
Testing labs
Environmental, food, cannabis and materials testing. The volume employer.
Energy and mining
Refineries, upgraders, mills and smelters need chemists on site. Often shift work.
Consumer and industrial products
Paints, adhesives, cosmetics, cleaning products. Formulation work.
Government
Health Canada, the Canada Border Services Agency, provincial environment ministries.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
A bachelor's degree is genuinely enough to start. Graduate school is for research and leadership.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Chemistry, calculus and physics. Chemistry programs will not admit you without senior chemistry and math.
Bachelor of Science in chemistry
4 years
Four years split between organic, analytical, physical and inorganic chemistry, with heavy lab hours. Take a co-op stream if your school has one.
First lab job
1 to 2 years
Analytical or quality control work. Expect to spend a year learning the instruments and the paperwork that goes with them.
Master's or PhD, if you want research
2 to 6 years
Needed to design chemistry rather than run it. Funded through assistantships.
Register as a Professional Chemist, if you are in a province that offers it
After about 2 years of work
Alberta and British Columbia both grant the title after a degree plus supervised experience.
Chemistry
Obviously, and take it seriously. First-year university chemistry moves fast.
Calculus and functions
Physical chemistry is math heavy.
Physics
Required by many chemistry programs.
English
Method reports and lab documentation are a large part of the job.
In Alberta the title Professional Chemist (P.Chem) is protected by law and granted by the Association of the Chemical Profession of Alberta. British Columbia grants the same title, and in Ontario the title Chartered Chemist (C.Chem) is protected and granted by the Association of the Chemical Profession of Ontario. Quebec goes further: you must belong to the Ordre des chimistes du Québec (the Quebec order of chemists) to do the work at all. Everywhere else in Canada anyone can call themselves a chemist. Registration usually needs an accepted chemistry degree plus about two years of relevant work.
Co-op chemistry
University of Waterloo, Simon Fraser University, University of Victoria, Memorial University.
Large research departments
University of Toronto, McGill University, University of British Columbia, University of Alberta, Universite de Montreal.
Strong regional programs
Dalhousie University, University of Saskatchewan, Carleton University, Brock University.
In Quebec chemistry is a closed profession: you must belong to the OCQ (Ordre des chimistes du Québec, the Quebec order of chemists) to do the work, not just to use the title.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
With Secondary V math (Technical and Scientific, or Science), chemistry and physics. The Science program at college asks for all three.
Science DEC (Diploma of College Studies)
2 years
Program 200.B1 at a CEGEP (public college): calculus, physics, chemistry and biology. Taught in English at John Abbott and Marianopolis colleges, among others.
Bachelor's in chemistry
A Quebec chemistry degree is accepted by the order. In English, Concordia's honours and specialization programs in chemistry are accredited by the order.
Show French
Before the permit
The order needs French. A Quebec high school diploma counts, even from an English school, as do 3 years of full-time study in French. Otherwise you pass the provincial French exam, about 3 hours long.
Join the order
Up to 90 business days
The application fee is $295 for 2026 to 2027, half that if you apply within 90 days of finishing your degree. The order decides within 90 business days of a complete file.
Under Quebec's law on chemists, these tasks are reserved to members of the Ordre des chimistes du Québec (the Quebec order of chemists).
Lab analysis
Carrying out the steps before, during and after an analysis in a laboratory.
Process work
Analysing, designing and running a chemical process.
Quality control
Checking and certifying what a substance is made of and how it changes.
Handling rules
Setting how a substance is transported, stored, used and disposed of.
Signed reports
Written opinions and reports on any of the above.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Instrument specialisation
Mass spectrometry and chromatography. Being the person who can fix and validate the instrument makes you hard to replace.
Method validation and quality systems
The paperwork side that regulated labs live on. Rare and valued.
Formulation
Designing products rather than testing them. Moves you from cost centre to product team.
Process chemistry
Scaling a reaction from a flask to a plant. Where chemistry meets engineering.
Data skills
Python or the R programming language for handling large instrument data sets.
Transport of dangerous goods training
A short certificate that many lab jobs ask for.
Professional Chemist registration
Granted in Alberta and British Columbia (Ontario has Chartered Chemist), and it travels well on a resume.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
You start by checking that the instruments passed their daily calibration, because nothing you do counts if they did not. Then samples: prepare them, run them, check the results against controls, and flag anything odd. Afternoons are usually paperwork, because every number you report has to be traceable. In an industrial plant you are also answering the control room when a batch is off specification, and that call can stop a production line.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Job Bank counts about 12,100 chemists working in Canada in 2023, and expects jobs and job seekers to stay roughly in balance through 2033. The median retirement age was 62.
John Polanyi of the University of Toronto shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on the faint infrared glow given off by molecules as they react.
The Chemical Institute of Canada brings together over 3,000 professionals in the chemical sciences. Joining as a student is a cheap way to meet employers.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Life and lab first, then the rest of the field. See every career in science and environment.
Last checked October 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. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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