Midwife

Deliver babies and care for families through pregnancy and the weeks after. On call around the clock, and paid well for it.

Typical pay: $105,000a year
Time to qualify: 4 yearsafter high school
Demand: Good
Licence needed: Yesregulated job

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Money

What you earn and what it costs to get there.

What midwives make

Typical

$105,000

New registrant

$85,000

Senior, full caseload

$135,000

In Ontario, midwives are self-employed but paid by the province through their practice group, on a grid that rises with experience. Job Bank's national median works out to about $97,000 a year, but its hourly figures fit salaried and part-time midwives better than self-employed caseload pay, so this card keeps the caseload grid figures. Quebec pays midwives a salary, which tends to be lower. Pay varies by province.

Starting pay

$90,000 to $100,000

First year in Ontario with a full caseload of about 40 births

A full caseload means about 40 clients a year as their main midwife, plus attending births for your partners' clients. Part-time caseloads are paid in proportion.

Top end

$130,000 to $150,000

Senior midwives after 10 or more years, before expenses

Self-employed means you pay your own licence and a share of the practice's rent and staff, though Ontario covers the malpractice insurance. Take-home is lower than the headline.

What it costs to get there

Bachelor of Midwifery (4 years): $7,000 to $10,000 a year
Books, equipment, travel to placements: $3,000 to $6,000
CMRE (Canadian Midwifery Registration Examination): About $1,000
Provincial registration: About $2,750 a year in Ontario
Roughly, all in: $35,000 to $50,000

Placements often send you to another city for months at a time. Budget for rent in two places and a car.

Benefits

Little that comes automatically
Self-employed in most provinces: no employer pension, no paid sick days. Ontario's funding includes some money toward benefits.
Malpractice insurance covered
In Ontario, the province pays it.
Salary and benefits in Quebec and a few hospital jobs
Rarer, and usually lower pay.
Real time off
Practice partners cover each other, so off-call weeks are truly off.

Education

The exact path from high school to qualified.

The path

A four-year degree you enter straight from high school. No nursing degree required.

1
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Biology, chemistry, English. Programs are small and competitive; high 80s helps.
2
Bachelor of Midwifery
4 years
A 4-year degree. About half of it is clinical placement with practising midwives, where you attend dozens of births before you graduate.
3
CMRE (Canadian Midwifery Registration Examination)
After graduation
A national multiple-choice exam, written online with a remote proctor, offered twice a year in spring and fall.
4
Register with your provincial college
A few weeks
For example the College of Midwives of Ontario. New registrants have a period with extra oversight.
5
Join a practice group
Right after
You do not apply to a hospital. You join or start a midwifery practice, which holds the hospital privileges.

High school courses that help

Biology
Required.
Chemistry
Required at most programs.
English
Required. Programs also interview.
Social sciences
Midwifery is about people as much as medicine.
A second language
Clients come from everywhere.

Time and money, at a glance

Years after high school: 4
Program size: Small: roughly 20 to 40 seats per school, admission averages in the mid 80s or higher
Total tuition: $30,000 to $40,000
Paid while training?: No, and placements are full time

A regulated, independent profession

Midwife is a protected title, regulated in every province and most territories. You register with your provincial college, for example the College of Midwives of Ontario, and registration transfers between provinces. Midwives are primary care providers: they order tests, prescribe some medications, and admit and discharge their own clients at hospitals without a doctor signing off. They refer to an obstetrician when a pregnancy becomes high risk.

Where people study

Only six recognized programs in the country.

McMaster, Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU, formerly Ryerson)
Ontario
UBC (University of British Columbia)
British Columbia
Mount Royal University
Calgary, Alberta
University of Manitoba
Manitoba
Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières
Quebec, in French

Optional

Things you don't need, but that help.

Extra skills that expand what you can do

Newborn resuscitation and emergency skills
Required refreshers every few years, and worth doing early.
Indigenous midwifery
Community-based programs in the North and on some First Nations train and support Indigenous midwives to bring birth back to their communities.
Expanded prescribing
Some provinces let midwives with extra courses prescribe more drugs and order more tests.
Master's degree
Teaching, research and policy work.

Nice-to-haves before you apply

Doula training or birth work
Attend births as a support person before you apply. Programs notice.
Volunteer with new parents or in women's health
A driver's licence and a reliable car
You will drive to someone's home at 3 in the morning.
Physical and emotional stamina
Births are long and you are awake for all of it.

Hospital and northern jobs

A few hospitals employ midwives on salary, and remote and Indigenous communities in the North fund midwifery so families do not have to fly out to give birth. Those posts often come with housing and pay well, and the rhythm is different from an urban practice group.

Extras

Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.

A typical day

There is no typical day, only on call and off call. On call, a pager can go at any hour, and a birth might take 2 hours or 20. Between births you run a clinic day of 30 to 60 minute prenatal and postpartum visits, plus home visits to newborns in their first week. Off call, you are truly off, usually for a week or more, because your practice partners cover.

The honest trade-offs

The good

Deep relationships: you follow a family from early pregnancy to 6 weeks after birth
Real autonomy as a primary care provider
Four years of school to six figures
Home, hospital or birth centre, your clients choose

The hard parts

On call 24 hours a day, sometimes for weeks at a stretch
Births at 3 a.m. and missed holidays
Self-employed: you handle your own taxes and business
When something goes wrong it is heavy. Rare, but real.

Work life

Typical hours: On call 24/7 for stretches, then off; 50 to 60 hours a week is common while on call
Remote work: No
Physical demand: High: long births and a lot of driving
Unionized: No, but the Association of Ontario Midwives negotiates pay with the province

Similar paths

Like the field but not this exact job?

Factoids

Things people don't tell you.

Free for families

In Ontario, BC and most other provinces, midwifery care is paid for by the provincial health plan, the same as a doctor. Clients pay nothing.

Ontario went first

Ontario was the first province to regulate and fund midwifery, in 1994. Before that, midwives had no legal standing and could not work in hospitals.

Home birth is a normal option

Ontario midwives attend births at home, in hospital and at birth centres in Toronto and Ottawa. Roughly 1 in 5 of their clients choose to give birth outside a hospital.

Booming demand

Midwives now attend roughly 1 in 6 births in Ontario, up from almost none in the early 1990s, and many practices keep waiting lists.

Where these numbers come from

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.