Prove things, model things, and solve problems other people cannot state clearly yet.
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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 $106,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $65,000 at the lower end to about $161,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
4 to 10 years after high school, on the usual route.
$28,000 to $52,000 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.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$106,000
Lower end
$65,000
Upper end
$161,000
Job Bank's national median is $51 an hour, about $106,000 a year at 40 hours a week. The lower end ($31.25) and upper end ($77.33) are the bottom and top of the wage range for everyone in the group. Job Bank counts mathematicians, statisticians and actuaries together in one group, so the figure covers all three.
$56.41 an hour
The median in Manitoba, about $117,000 a year
Quebec is next at $51.98 and Ontario at $51.28. Newfoundland and Labrador has the lowest median, $40.11. First jobs are as an analyst, modeller or junior quantitative role. A co-op degree means you already have 16 to 20 months of real work behind you.
Roughly, all in
$28,000 to $52,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
Both ends are the four year bachelor's degree, at 7,000 a year cheap and 13,000 a year expensive. Graduate school is left out of the numbers because master's and doctoral students in mathematics are normally funded with a stipend, so those years cost time rather than tuition. There are no labs, tools, licence fees or placement fees in this field, and a laptop is close to the whole equipment list. The real price of the doctoral route is the decade on a small stipend, not the fees.
Math is one of the cheapest sciences to study. There are no labs, no tools and no placement fees, and co-op students earn while they study.
Co-op earnings before you graduate
Waterloo and other co-op programs alternate school terms with paid work terms.
Pension and benefits
Standard in government, banking and university work.
Remote-friendly
Modelling work travels well. A lot of it is done from home.
Wide exit options
The same degree opens software, finance, actuarial work, cryptography and teaching.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
A degree gets you an applied job. Research and teaching at a university need a doctorate.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Take every math course offered, plus computer science. Math contests are worth doing because some universities use them in admission and scholarships.
Bachelor's degree in mathematics
4 years
Pure math, applied math, or a combined math and computer science program. Choose co-op if the school offers it.
First job, or graduate school
Decision point
Many graduates stop here and work as analysts, modellers or developers. Others carry on.
Master's degree
1 to 2 years
A year or two. Course-based master's programs in financial or industrial mathematics are aimed straight at industry jobs.
Doctorate
4 to 5 years
Original research and a thesis. Required to teach and run research at a university.
Advanced functions and calculus
The entry ticket to any math program.
Computer science
Almost no math job today is done without code.
Physics
Applied math leans on it constantly.
Math contests
The Canadian Open Mathematics Challenge and similar contests run by the Canadian Mathematical Society are used for scholarships at several universities.
Anyone can call themselves a mathematician. There is no licence and no exam. What employers look at is the degree, what you can prove you have built or solved, and your coding. Two neighbouring careers do have credentials: actuaries write a long series of professional exams, and statisticians can earn the Professional Statistician (P.Stat) accreditation from the Statistical Society of Canada. Neither is needed for a math job.
Ontario
University of Waterloo, which runs the only dedicated faculty of mathematics in North America, plus the University of Toronto, Queen's University and McMaster University.
Quebec
McGill University, Université de Montréal, Université Laval.
West
University of British Columbia, University of Alberta, University of Calgary, Simon Fraser University.
Atlantic
Dalhousie University, Memorial University of Newfoundland, University of New Brunswick.
Quebec students spend 2 years at a CEGEP (public college) after Secondary V, so the bachelor's degree takes 3 years instead of 4.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
With Secondary V physics, chemistry and math in the TS (Technical and Scientific) or SN (Science) sequence. These are the entry courses for the CEGEP (public college) science program.
Science DEC (Diploma of College Studies) (200.B1)
2 years
2 years of calculus, linear algebra, physics, chemistry and biology. In English at Dawson College, which also runs a Science, Computer Science and Mathematics DEC (200.C1) with more programming.
Bachelor's in mathematics
3 years
90 credits, 3 years full time. The Université de Montréal program, in French, offers pure and applied math, statistics, financial math and actuarial science. McGill and Concordia teach mathematics in English.
Master's degree
1 to 2 years
The next step for most research and modelling work, as in the rest of Canada.
Doctorate
4 to 5 years
Original research and a thesis. Required to teach and run research at a university.
Students from other provinces pay $5,560.87 a term at the same university.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Quantitative finance
Pricing and risk models at banks and trading firms.
Cryptography and security
The Communications Security Establishment, Canada's federal signals agency, hires mathematicians directly to work on codes.
Operations research
Scheduling airlines, routing trucks, planning hospital capacity.
Machine learning
Optimisation and linear algebra are the core of it. The mathematics side of the field hires well.
Python and one more language
You will be asked to code in interviews, whatever the job title says.
Co-op or internships
Four work terms beats a slightly higher average, every time.
Writing ability
Explaining a model to someone who does not do math is the skill that gets you promoted.
Teaching or tutoring
Paid, flexible, and it makes you much better at the subject.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
In industry: take a messy problem from someone who cannot describe it precisely, turn it into something you can actually solve, build the model, test it against real data, then explain it in plain words to the people who will use it. Long stretches at a whiteboard or a screen. At a university: teaching, supervising students, reading, and slow careful work on a proof that may take months.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Job Bank counted about 16,000 mathematicians, statisticians and actuaries in Canada in 2023. Only 15% were 50 or older, one of the youngest groups in science.
The Canadian Mathematical Society runs the Canadian Open Mathematics Challenge, which feeds into the Canadian Mathematical Olympiad and then Canada's team for the International Mathematical Olympiad. High school students can enter through their school.
Search job boards for the word and you find almost nothing. The same work is posted as quantitative analyst, modelling specialist, operations research analyst, data scientist or cryptographer.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Physics, space and numbers 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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