Major differences in the median wages of technical workers in the arts and culture across the country
Also: The gap between technical workers in the arts and culture and other technical workers varies significantly between the provinces
In late April, I analyzed Canadian and provincial data on the median wages of employed professional workers in the arts and culture, and I offered comparisons with professional workers in other sectors.
Today, I examine data on the median wages of employed technical workers in the arts and culture, and I provide comparisons with technical workers in other parts of the economy.
Statistics Canada grouping of “technical occupations in the arts and culture” includes:
Technical workers in libraries, archives, motion pictures, broadcasting, and the performing arts
Graphic and interior designers
The data only include people who have an employed position in technical occupations.
Data source, reliability, and methods
The data source is the Labour Force Survey, which doesn’t have a large enough sample size to delve into occupation-by-occupation details (which would require a custom data request). I’m therefore going to focus on readily available summary groupings.
There are significant year-to-year variations in some provincial wage statistics that are likely due to the relatively low sample sizes. I have therefore smoothed out the annual variations by producing a three-year average (i.e., average of 2020 to 2022). This also allows me to provide estimates for technical workers in all 10 provinces. Given the lack of precision in the statistics, I’ve opted to round off the median wage calculations to the nearest dollar.
For a deeper dive into the limitations of Labour Force Survey data, please see my detailed thoughts from April 18. The end of today’s post includes a shorter version of that information.