Jobs

The best-paying, most-hiring industries revealed

Why you should learn math and move to Alberta

Photo by lindsay.dee.bunny on Flickr

Want to know which industries are hiring Canadians? Better yet: want to know which industries are hiring and paying handsomely?

Look no further than the new Canadian Business report on Canada’s Best Jobs. It shows the 50 best occupations based on highest salaries, salary growth and recent upticks in employment.

The fastest-growing occupation—no surprise here—is petroleum engineering. The guys and gals who calculate how best to harvest bitumen from Alberta oil sands saw their numbers increase by 85 per cent between 2006 and 2011. They also took home fat pay-cheques: a median of $90,002.

Next on the list reflects the growth in health care spending (and attempts to rein it in). Nursing supervisors saw their numbers increase by 46 per cent while their pay grew 24 per cent to $74,880.

As for Canada’s Worst Jobs (those with declining employment and pay), most are in predictable industries, like developing film. Another job on the list reminds us why the phrase “starving artist” endures. Employment for actors has dropped 39 per cent; their median salary was just $31,200.

Canadian Business used figures for working Canadians of all ages collected by Statistics Canada.

For a measure of how well recent university graduates are doing, check out the Council of Ontario Universities’ survey of the class of 2008. It shows how many graduates were employed two years post-university in 2010 and what their average salaries were then. On that list, Fine and Applied Arts graduates were at the bottom, making $34,653. Dentists were at the top, earning $98,333.

We can’t all be dentists (and probably don’t want to be). But if you’re looking for a career with solid prospects, there are plenty to choose from in the Canadian Business Canada’s Best Jobs report.

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