Find out what people want before a company builds it. Surveys, data and clear reports.
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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.
The median pay is about $92,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $57,000 at the lower end to about $144,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
3 to 5 years after high school, on the usual route.
$300 to $57,000 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.
Limited demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$92,000
Lower end
$57,000
Upper end
$144,000
Job Bank's national median is $44 an hour, about $92,000 a year at 40 hours a week. The lower end ($27.64) and upper end ($69.23) are the bottom and top of the wage range for everyone in the group. Job Bank pools market researchers with business development officers, so the figures do not cover research jobs alone.
$52.56 an hour
The median in the Northwest Territories, about $109,000 a year
Alberta is the top province at $48.38, and Prince Edward Island is the lowest at $37. Senior roles include research director and head of insights.
Roughly, all in
$300 to $57,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is moving across from a job beside it, such as a marketing assistant, a survey or call centre role, or sales support, and teaching yourself spreadsheets, databases and survey tools. The analytics certificates from the big technology companies cost nothing. The high end is a four year university degree plus a one year college certificate in research analysis, the combination most job advertisements ask for. The cheap door is harder because there is no credential to show, so you need an existing job to move from and a folder of real studies you have already run.
Typical debt is similar to any business or social science degree. Co-op programs let you graduate with experience and less debt.
Health and dental
Standard at research firms and corporate employers.
Pension
Government research and statistics jobs come with a defined-benefit pension, one that pays a set amount every month for life.
Hybrid work
Most analysis happens on a laptop. Fieldwork and client meetings are the exception.
Bonuses
Common at corporate insights teams, usually a percentage of salary.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
A degree with statistics in it, then a junior research job.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Math through Grade 12, plus English. Data management courses are a bonus.
Bachelor's degree
4 years
Marketing, business, economics, psychology, sociology or statistics. Take every research methods and statistics course you can.
Graduate certificate, optional
1 year
Some Ontario colleges run 1-year research analyst graduate certificates for people who already have a degree or diploma. Georgian's includes a 450 hour co-op term, though it has paused intake for fall 2027.
Junior analyst
1 to 3 years
Writing survey questions, cleaning data, building charts and slides for senior staff.
Analyst and senior analyst
By year 5
Running your own studies from design to presentation.
Data management and statistics
The core of the job.
English
Findings are useless if nobody understands the report.
Business and marketing
You research to answer business questions.
Psychology or social science
Why people say one thing and do another.
No licence is required. The Canadian Marketing Association offers a chartered marketer program, and Canada's insights industry association offers a voluntary designation for research professionals, but employers hire on your degree, your statistics skills and your portfolio of projects. Privacy law does apply to your work: surveys and data must follow federal and provincial privacy rules.
In Quebec the degree takes 3 years after a 2 year CEGEP (public college) program, and Quebec has its own privacy law for the data you collect.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
With Secondary V math in the Technical and Scientific or the Science sequence. Business programs at college and university build on it.
Social Science DEC (Diploma of College Studies) with math
2 years
A 2 year CEGEP program. Dawson College's Commerce profile, for example, prepares you for marketing and economics at university and includes the math business schools ask for.
Bachelor's degree
3 years
HEC Montréal's BAA (Bachelor of Business Administration) offers marketing and data science and business analytics specializations, in French or bilingual. In English, Concordia's Marketing Bachelor of Commerce has co-op terms that can include marketing research.
Junior analyst
1 to 3 years
Writing surveys, cleaning data and building reports. National studies always include Quebec, so analysts who work in both French and English are useful.
Law 25, Quebec's privacy law for businesses, covers the personal information you collect in surveys and customer data. Since September 2023 a business must ask for consent separately for each purpose, in simple and clear terms. The CAI (Commission d'accès à l'information, Quebec's privacy regulator) can impose penalties of up to $10 million or 2% of worldwide revenue.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Statistics and coding
R, Python or SQL (structured query language, for databases). Lets you model data, not only run surveys.
Qualitative research
Running focus groups and interviews. A separate skill that senior researchers combine with the numbers.
Data visualization
Tableau or Power BI (Microsoft's business intelligence tool). Turning data into a story executives act on.
A master's degree
In marketing analytics, statistics or economics. Opens senior and government roles.
Co-op or internship at a research firm
The industry hires heavily from its own interns.
Student projects with real data
A survey you designed, analyzed and presented is a portfolio piece.
French
National studies always include Quebec.
Political and public opinion polling is a small, high-profile corner of market research. Firms like those you see quoted in election coverage hire the same skills: sampling, survey design and statistics. The hours are intense during campaigns and the results are public, which is either thrilling or terrifying.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Morning checking the response count on a survey in the field and fixing a question that is confusing people. A client call to agree on what a new study needs to answer. Hours in a spreadsheet or statistics software cleaning data and running cross-tabs. Afternoon building slides that turn numbers into three clear points. Some days include moderating a focus group behind a one-way mirror or sitting in on customer interviews.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
A properly random national survey of about 1,000 people gives a margin of error of roughly 3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The math of sampling, not the size of the country, sets that number.
Under Law 25, Quebec's privacy regulator can fine a business up to $10 million or 2% of worldwide revenue, and since September 2023 consent must be asked for each purpose separately.
Job Bank counted about 33,700 people in the market research and business development group in 2023, and rates the outlook limited in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Marketing and sales first, then the rest of the field. See every career in business and money.
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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