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Canadian careers

Where the figures for canadian careers come from, how they were collected, and what checking every source link found. Used on /ca/careers and every list, quiz result, comparison and PDF built from them.

Last updated October 31, 2026.

How the figures were collected

Each Canadian career is one data file with five chapters (Money, Education, Optional, Extras, Factoids), a set of quick facts, a list of sources and the date it was last checked. The quick facts drive the lists, the quiz, the career comparer and the PDF, so they are the figures held to the strictest rule: a source page for each one.

  • Pay. Government of Canada Job Bank, the wage page for the occupation (low, median and high hourly wage for Canada). The card's yearly figure is the hourly wage times 2,080 hours (40 hours a week for a year), rounded. Each page links the exact Job Bank page. Job Bank's figures are themselves two to three years old and cover everyone in the occupation, so a first-year worker usually earns near the low end.
  • Training time, cost and licensing. The body that sets them: Red Seal and the provincial apprenticeship authority for trades, the provincial regulator for regulated professions, the school's own program and fee pages for degrees and diplomas, the government program page for public-service careers. Costs are added up from those pages and the card's note says what was added.
  • Quebec route. Where Quebec's path differs (CEGEP (Collège d'enseignement général et professionnel, Quebec's college before university), a DEP (Diplôme d'études professionnelles, a vocational diploma), the construction commission), the cards cite Inforoute FPT, the Government of Quebec and the Quebec regulator.
  • Self-employed careers (day trader, dropshipper, online creator) have no wage survey. Their income figures come from the studies and platform reports cited on the card, the page says "typical income" instead of pay, and they are kept out of the lists and quiz that read a figure as a wage.
  • Outlook is Job Bank's own three-year job prospects rating, reduced to good, moderate or limited.
  • How to start a trade in Ontario (on 59 trade careers, and every trade side by side at /ca/start-a-trade): the trade, its code, whether a licence is needed, Red Seal, hours and the school grade to start come from Skilled Trades Ontario's trade page and Ontario's trades law (Ontario Regulations 876/21 and 877/21). The steps and where sponsors come from are Skilled Trades Ontario's own; the youth program, pre-apprenticeship and grants are ontario.ca's and canada.ca's pages. canada.ca refuses our link check on every page, so the federal loan and Employment Insurance are each linked first to an ontario.ca or Skilled Trades Ontario page that says the same thing and that the check can read. Class hours for the two electrician trades follow Skilled Trades Ontario's 2024 curriculum (1,050 hours in four levels), because its trade pages still show the older 840; the page says so. Ontario sets no apprentice pay as a percentage in law, so the page gives only a floor: the hours on the job times Ontario's minimum wage.

In numbers

Pages with sources450
Citations5,345
Distinct source links3,649
Sites cited1,015

Pay figures re-read from the source

On October 22, 2026 a script opened the wage page every career cites and compared the card's median and range with the page, allowing 5% for rounding (Canada: hourly wage times 2,080 hours).

Card matches the wage page429
Self-employed career: no wage survey, income from the studies cited on the card18
Pay comes from a published pay grid or scale, cited on the card, not the wage survey2

Every link, checked

Checked October 31, 2026: one request per link, as "ClaudeBot (research for career.help)", robots.txt honoured, no retries. A site that refuses automated visitors is recorded as refused, not retried under another name.

Reachable2,986
Moved (redirects)93
Refused automated check531
Not reachable39

The full result for this part, one line per link, is in the downloadable spreadsheet: check-2026-10-31.csv (all parts, with the page that cites each link in the inventory file beside it).

Links that did not answer or refused (570)

Each with the page that cites it. "Refused" means the site blocks our link checker; the figure was read when it was collected, from the page itself or from a dated archived copy, and a person opening it in a browser is noted where that happened. "Not reachable" links are being replaced or removed.

Every site cited (1,015)

Most cited first: every site with three or more links, and the first two hundred in any case. The rest are sites cited once or twice (a regulator's page, one school's calendar); every one of their links is on the page that cites it and in the spreadsheet above. 815 such sites are not listed here.

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