Pull the numbers, make the charts, answer the question. The most common first job in data.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
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 $85,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $52,000 at the lower end to about $127,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
2 to 4 years after high school, on the usual route.
$4,300 to $60,300 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
No. There is no licence 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
$85,000
Lower end
$52,000
Upper end
$127,000
Job Bank's national median is $40.87 an hour, about $85,000 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, $25 and $61.03 an hour. Job Bank pools this title with database analysts and data administrators (NOC, the National Occupational Classification, code 21223).
$45.08 an hour
The median in Newfoundland and Labrador, the highest of any province
British Columbia and Quebec follow at $43.96. Nova Scotia's median is the lowest, at $33.65. Banks in Toronto hire many analysts straight from co-op.
Roughly, all in
$4,300 to $60,300
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a one year college certificate at Ontario public rates plus one certification exam such as the Microsoft Power BI (business intelligence) Data Analyst credential, which is a single 100 minute test. The high end is a four year university degree in statistics, math, business, economics or data science at the top of the tuition range. A two year diploma at BCIT (British Columbia Institute of Technology) runs about $16,750 in total and sits between the two. The tools themselves are cheap, and some cost nothing: Excel, SQL (Structured Query Language, used to pull data out of databases) and Python.
This is one of the few data jobs where a college diploma or a non-tech degree plus self-study is enough to get hired.
Hybrid work
Standard at banks and government.
Pension and benefits
Government, hospitals and banks all offer them.
Paid certifications
Employers often cover Microsoft, Tableau or cloud exams.
A clear ladder
Analyst to senior analyst to data scientist or manager is a well-worn path.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Shorter and more flexible than data science. The tools matter more than the degree title.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Math, especially Data Management or statistics if your school offers it. Get good at spreadsheets now.
Diploma or degree
1 to 4 years
A 2-year college diploma (the British Columbia Institute of Technology has a Predictive Analytics option), a 1-year post-grad analytics certificate after any degree, or a 4-year degree in statistics, math, business, economics or data science.
Learn the three tools
During school
SQL (the language for querying databases), a dashboard tool (Power BI or Tableau) and Excel. Add Python if you want to move up.
Co-op or first job
During or after school
Banks, insurers, retailers and government hire analysts in large numbers. Co-op at a bank often turns into an offer.
Certify and specialize
First 2 years on the job
A Power BI (business intelligence) or Tableau certificate, then a specialty: marketing, finance, health or operations analytics.
Data Management or statistics
The actual job.
Advanced Functions
Required for most degree routes.
Business or accounting
Most analyst questions are business questions.
English
The chart is half the job. The sentence under it is the other half.
No licence, no registration, no protected title. Engineers Canada lists data analyst as one of the titles anyone may use. Vendor certificates from Microsoft, Tableau or Google are optional but common on job ads, and Microsoft's Power BI (business intelligence) certificate has to be renewed every year with an online assessment at no cost.
Quebec adds the CEGEP (public college) years. A 3 year technical diploma can get you working, or a 2 year diploma leads to a shorter bachelor's.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
Take Secondary IV math in the Technical and Scientific or the Science sequence. It meets the math requirement for the computer science DEC (Diploma of College Studies) and keeps university science programs open.
Technical route: Computer Science Technology DEC (420.B0)
3 years
3 years, with no tuition for full-time Quebec residents. Every program teaches databases, and Vanier lists data analytics among its graduates' jobs. In English at Dawson, Vanier, John Abbott, Champlain and Heritage.
Or a 2 year pre-university DEC (Diploma of College Studies)
2 years
For the university route, pick one that includes Calculus 1, Calculus 2 and Linear Algebra, such as Dawson's Science, Computer Science and Mathematics (200.C1).
Bachelor's in data science
3 to 4 years
Concordia offers data science as a BA or BSc (Bachelor of Arts or Science) and as a Bachelor of Computer Science. Each takes 3 to 4 years and needs those three math courses from CEGEP.
First analyst job
Ongoing
Reporting or junior analyst roles, then the same tools and certificates as anywhere in Canada. No licence and no order.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Python or R
The line between analyst and data scientist is mostly whether you can code.
Analytics engineering
Building the data pipelines that feed the dashboards.
Cloud data warehouses
Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks. Certificates are cheap and in demand.
A domain
Finance, health, marketing or supply chain. Analysts who understand the business become the ones in the room.
A public dashboard
A Tableau Public or Power BI (business intelligence) project on real data is your portfolio.
Microsoft Power BI (business intelligence) Data Analyst certification
One 100-minute exam. Common on Canadian analyst job ads.
Storytelling
Analysts who present clearly get invited to decisions.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
A request lands: marketing wants to know which campaign worked, or a manager wants last quarter's numbers by province. You write SQL (the language for querying databases) to pull the data, clean it in Python or Excel, build a chart or update a dashboard, and write three sentences explaining what it means. Meetings with the people who asked. Some days are all dashboard maintenance. Month-end and quarter-end are busy everywhere.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Every five years Statistics Canada counts everyone in the country, and analysts spend the following years turning those answers into the numbers that decide where hospitals, schools and transit get built.
NHL (National Hockey League) teams run analytics departments, and Canadian franchises hire data analysts from the same university programs as the banks do.
Job Bank counted about 52,400 database analysts and data administrators in Canada in 2023. Only 22% were 50 or older, and Job Bank expects demand and supply to stay roughly in balance through 2033.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Data and AI first, then the rest of the field. See every career in tech.
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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