Women now account for a record-high share of Canada’s top income earners, but still have a long way to go to achieve parity with men both in terms of their share of top earners and the size of their paycheques.
The latest high-income figures released by Statistics Canada this week show women made up 25.4 per cent of the top 1 per cent of income tax filers in 2020, a share that’s risen steadily over the past four decades.
At the provincial level, women in Alberta made up the smallest share of top earners, at 21.4 per cent, while in Newfoundland women accounted for the highest share at 28.4 per cent.
A 2019 study by Statistics Canada shed light on the working women who make up the top 1 per cent. They tend to be better educated than their male counterparts, are twice as likely to work in the health care sector – top one-percenter men are more likely to hold management jobs – and are less likely to be married or have children than high-earning men.
While there are more women in the top tier of earners, they’ve made few gains when it comes to closing the salary gap with men. The average salary for women in the 1 per cent was $225,300, 35 per cent below that of men. That gap is roughly the same as it was two decades ago.
Jason Kirby