Drill, blast and haul ore a kilometre below ground. High pay with no degree, in exchange for shift work in the dark.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Production miner
$87,000
Trainee or mine labourer
$58,000
Bonus miner, remote site
$116,000
Job Bank's national median is $42 an hour, about $87,000 a year full time. Production bonuses paid per metre drilled or tonne moved can add a lot on top, and remote fly-in mines in Nunavut and northern Quebec pay the most. Job Bank reports 97% of miners get at least one benefit like a pension or insurance.
About $28 an hour
Job Bank's low end, about $58,000 a year
New hires often start on surface or as underground labourers while they finish training modules. Pay jumps once you are signed off to run equipment and work a production crew.
$56 an hour and up
Job Bank's high end, about $116,000 a year before bonus
Experienced jumbo drill operators, bolters and development miners on bonus at a busy mine can gross well into six figures. Overtime on a rotation adds more.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
Most miners never pay tuition. The usual route is getting hired first and being trained on the company's money, including the five week common core safety program, with boots and gear supplied. The low end reflects that. The high end is paying for the safety program yourself and adding an optional two year college mining diploma at 3,000 to 5,000 a year. Better Jobs Ontario funding covers up to 28,000 of training for eligible applicants, so even the paid route is often covered by someone else.
Most miners never pay tuition. The usual route is getting hired first and being trained on the company's dime.
Pension and health plans
Nearly universal at large mines. Many are unionized with the United Steelworkers.
Production bonus
Paid on top of wages when the crew hits targets.
Camp, flights and meals paid
At fly-in, fly-out sites. Your expenses at home are all you pay.
Northern living allowances
Extra pay in the territories and remote regions.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Get hired, get trained, get signed off module by module.
High school diploma
Grade 12
The standard minimum. Math, shop and science help. A driver's licence is expected.
Safety tickets and fitness
Weeks
First aid, WHMIS (workplace hazardous materials training), and a medical. Mines test for drugs and alcohol.
Common Core, in Ontario
About 5 weeks
Ontario law requires new underground workers to complete the Basic Underground Hard Rock Miner Common Core (Program 770010). NORCAT (a mining training centre in Sudbury) runs it in 5 weeks: 2 days of theory, then practical work in a training mine. Other provinces use company training.
Underground labourer or trainee
6 to 18 months
Scaling loose rock, moving supplies, learning the mine. You get signed off on specialty modules one at a time: bolting, drilling, mucking, driving underground trucks.
Production or development miner
1 to 3 years in
Running a jumbo drill, a scoop or a bolter on a crew, usually on bonus.
Math
Drill patterns, explosives loading and survey marks are all numbers.
Shop and mechanics
You fix your own equipment underground when it breaks.
Physics and earth science
Rock mechanics is why the roof stays up.
Physical education
Heavy work in heat and dust, 12 hours at a time.
There is no national miner's licence. In Ontario, Regulation 854 under the health and safety act makes Common Core training mandatory before you work underground, and graduates are registered with the province. Quebec and Manitoba offer voluntary trade certification for miners. Handling explosives needs a separate blasting certificate in most provinces. The Mining Industry Human Resources Council (MiHR) also runs a voluntary national certification for underground miners.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Jumbo drill operator
The face-drilling rig that sets the pace of development. Top wage on the crew.
Blasting certificate
Loading and firing rounds. A provincial certificate plus federal explosives clearance.
Mine rescue team
Volunteer, extra training, huge respect underground.
Shift boss or supervisor
Ontario has a separate supervisor Common Core. Salary instead of bonus, more responsibility.
Heavy equipment experience
Scoops and haul trucks underground are the same idea as surface machines.
A trade
Electricians, millwrights and heavy-duty mechanics are in short supply at mines and often earn more than miners.
Comfort with camp life
Two weeks in, two weeks out is normal at remote sites.
French
Quebec has some of the busiest mining camps in Canada.
Many Canadian mines are hours from the nearest town. Crews fly in for a rotation of 2 or 3 weeks, live in camp with meals and a gym, work 12-hour shifts every day, then fly home for 1 or 2 weeks off. The pay is higher and you spend nothing at site, but you miss birthdays and hockey games, and camp life is not for everyone.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Line up for the cage before 6am, safety meeting, then the ride down. At the heading you scale loose rock, check ground support, then the cycle: drill the face, load explosives, blast at shift end, and next shift mucks out the broken rock and bolts the roof. Lunch in a refuge station. It is warm, wet, loud and dark except for your headlamp. Up on the cage 11 or 12 hours later, shower, sleep, repeat.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
NORCAT (a mining training centre in Sudbury) runs its Common Core program in a real underground mine used for training, so new miners learn to scale, bolt and drill in actual rock before they ever start a job.
The Ontario Mining Association says mineral exports reached $64 billion in 2023, about one quarter of everything the province exports, and warns the sector does not have enough workers coming through the pipeline.
Job Bank counted about 29,400 underground miners in Canada in 2023. Just over a quarter are 50 or older, with a median retirement age of 64, so spots open up as they leave.
Canada is one of the world's biggest producers of nickel, gold, potash and uranium, much of it from underground mines in Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan. Demand for battery metals is pulling new mines into development.
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.