Science and Engineering PhDs: A Canadian Portrait

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by Michael McKenzie
Science, Innovation and Electronic Information Division

Analysis in Brief

Summary
Male doctorates outnumbered females
PhDs are older workers
Most employed PhDs work in educational services
Female earned less
Most science and engineering PhDs in large cities
Kingston, Ontario: Science and engineering PhD capital of Canada
Highest earnings in Vancouver, lowest in Edmonton

Summary

People who hold doctorates are an important piston in Canada’s labour force engine. They not only represent the highest educational attainment level in a knowledge-based economy, they are also highly skilled industrial researchers and innovators, teachers and professors and scientists who take care of our health as well.

This study profiles the subgroup of scientists and engineers with doctorates at the beginning of the millennium. They are those individuals who held an earned doctorate in agricultural, biological and veterinary sciences, or engineering and applied sciences, or health sciences or mathematics, computer and physical sciences. Using data from the 2001 Census, it analyzes the geographical distribution of this important Canadian workforce, together with the industrial sector where they work and their earnings.

For every woman who held a science or engineering (S&E) doctorate in Canada in 2001, there were four men.

For each age group, earnings of female science and engineering PhDs were significantly lower than those of their male counterparts. For every dollar earned by a male doctorate holder, female doctorates earned 77 cents. In contrast, a female in the general labour force earned 71 cents for every dollar earned by a male.

On average, a scientist or engineer with a PhD employed on a full-time basis earned $70,000, nearly twice the average of $36,000 for Canada’s paid full-time workers in 2000.

Science and engineering PhDs in Vancouver had the highest age and gender adjusted earnings.¹ Those in Edmonton had the lowest, just behind Quebec City and Montreal.

Nine out of every 10 scientists and engineers worked in a large city in 2001. The very few rural scientists and engineers tended to be much older than their urban counterparts. Among large cities, the Ontario city of Kingston was the science and engineering PhD capital of Canada, based on labour market concentration rankings.

The majority (60%) of full-time science and engineering PhDs in 2000 were working in the public sector. The largest numbers were employed in educational services.

The private sector paid significantly more than the public sector in 2000 for services offered by young Canadian scientists and engineers with PhDs. However, the gap between public sector and private sector earnings narrowed as the PhDs in science and engineering aged. Earnings in public sector even surpassed, on average, those of the private sector for older workers.

In 2001, employed PhDs were older than the average Canadian worker. The average age of the 100,000 employed PhDs reached 48, and it was 46 for the 57,095 employed science and engineering PhDs. In contrast, the average age for the 15 million employed Canadian workers did not exceed 39.

Because S&E knowledge is one of the keys to a dynamic economy, competitiveness, innovation and productivity growth, examining Canada’s stock of S&E PhD human capital remains important. Even with a good stock of human S&E capital, Canada needs to monitor this stock in order to remain prosperous in this increasingly knowledge-based world.

Even if S&E human capital is acquired in many forms including on-the-job learning and formal education, focussing on PhDs remains vital. They are rarer than other S&E human resources and their qualifications are more specific and essential to many kinds of leading-edge scientific and engineering work. Even if they account for most of the total years of S&E education accumulated by Canadians in the past 15 years, technical training diplomas, community college degrees, bachelor degrees and masters degrees are not the focus of this paper even if they are all recognized as very important factors in building S&E human capital.

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Male doctorates outnumbered females

Men who held doctorates outnumbered their female counterparts in 2001. This was also true for science and engineering PhDs.

Of a total of just over 100,000 employed doctorate holders in 2001, nearly 73,000 or 73% were men.

In terms of science and engineering doctorates alone, of a total of 57,095 of these individuals, 45,670 were men, representing nearly 80%.

In contrast, women accounted for 47% of employed Canadians, and 57% of university graduates.

Table 1
Population, labour force and employment by gender and education, Canada, 2001

In 1995 the number of women graduating with a Master’s degree had surpassed the number of men. Moreover, the number of women completing undergraduate studies had surpassed the number of men well before then. Men graduating with earned doctorates still outnumbered their woman counterparts in 2004 but the gap narrowed considerably between 1995 and 2001 and then remained stable up to 2004. In 1995, 1,400 more men than women graduated with a PhD; by 2001 this gap had been cut by more than half to 540.

Chart 1
The gap between female and male PhD graduates is narrowing

Women graduating with PhDs in non science and engineering fields, such as education and the social sciences, are in large part responsible for the narrowing of the gender gap in PhD graduates in recent years. Women exceeded men in doctoral enrolments and PhDs awarded in the field of education well before 1995, and in the social sciences since 1997. Presumably, this could reflect a preference by women for social sciences, education and humanities that can partially explain a lower enrolment in S&E.

However, the gap between the number of men and women PhDs in science and engineering may still exist for some time as it is larger and the number of female graduates cannot induce a dramatic change in the labour market in a short time period.

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PhDs are older workers

PhDs typically enter the labour force for full-time jobs in their early to mid 30s, so they also tend to be older than the average Canadian worker.

In 2001, the average age of the 100,000 employed PhDs reached 48. In contrast, the average age for the 15 million employed Canadian workers did not exceed 39. In the meantime, the 57,095 employed science and engineering PhDs averaged 46 years old.

In the general population, workers aged 45 and over accounted for only 33% of the employed population aged 25 and over. In contrast, employed PhDs aged 45 and over accounted for nearly 59% of total employed PhDs.

Moreover, PhDs tended to retire later in life. For example, the proportion of PhDs still working after 65 years old is over 5.0% while the equivalent proportion in the general labour force is less than 2.5%.

Table 2
Employment by age group and educational and labour force  characteristics, Canada, 2001

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Most employed PhDs work in educational services

In terms of full-year, full-time employment, PhDs worked in educational services more than in any other industrial category in 2000, mostly at universities and colleges. This holds true also when analyzing only science and engineering PhDs.

In fact, more than 60% of the jobs occupied by individuals with science and engineering doctorates were dominated by educational services, health care and social assistance, and public administration, all public sector jobs.

In last place was the manufacturing sector, which accounted for only 5.6% of PhD full-time jobs. In contrast, in the general Canadian labour market, the manufacturing sector employed 16.9% of the population, one of the biggest shares for any sector. Science and engineering PhDs fared better in the manufacturing sector compared to the other PhDs.

Another important difference between S&E and non S&E PhDs can be found in the number of jobs held in the private sector. The proportion of S&E PhDs (41.1%) employed in the private sector was the double of that of non S&E PhDs (21.4%).

In terms of public administration jobs, the federal government alone employed twice as many PhDs on a full-time basis as provincial and local governments.

Table 3
Full-year full-time employment by industry and educational characteristics, Canada, 2000

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Female earned less

In 2000, for each age group, earnings of female science and engineering PhDs were significantly lower than those of their male counterparts. These women earned 77 cents for every dollar earned by males who held a doctorate in science and engineering. In comparison, female workers of all educational backgrounds earned 71 cents for each dollar earned by men. Part of the gap may have been due to a difference in number of hours worked, a factor this study did not analyze.

The salary gap between genders for S&E PhDs surpassed $24,000 per year for individuals under 35 years old. It was the age group with the largest gap with male earnings being 53% higher than female earnings.

The private sector paid significantly more than the public sector in 2000 for services offered by young Canadian scientists and engineers with PhDs. Average full-time employment earnings for scientists and engineers under 35 years of age in the private sector were almost $24,000 higher (52%) than those in the public.

However, the gap between public sector and private sector earnings narrowed as the PhDs in science and engineering aged. Earnings in public sector surpassed, on average, those of the private sector for older workers.

PhDs pay follows the trend documented in other papers² — the more education a Canadian has, the better the earnings.

Table 4
Full-time earnings by age and sex for S&E PhDs and Canadian workers, Canada, 2000

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Most science and engineering PhDs in large cities

Canadian scientists and engineers with doctorate degrees appear to cluster around great centres of gravity, in this case large cities. About 9 out of every 10 employed scientists and engineers with PhDs worked in large cities in 2001, the highest concentration when compared to other levels of education.

In comparison, two out of every three employed people (67%) were in large cities for the 15 million employed Canadians.

Rural scientists and engineers tended to be much older than their urban counterparts. Two-thirds (68%) of the 3,850 scientists and engineers employed in rural areas were over 45 years old compared with only half (47%) for the large cities combined.

Recent immigrants with science and engineering PhDs tended to settle in Canada’s largest cities such as Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. As they were younger than Canadian-born science and engineering PhDs on average, they likely become one of the reasons why close to half of urban scientists and engineers are under 45 years of age.

Table 5
Employment and population counts by educational characteristics and city size, Canada, 2001

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Kingston, Ontario: Science and engineering PhD capital of Canada

In 2001, the Ontario city of Kingston was the science and engineering PhD capital of Canada, based on their concentration in the labour market in the 27 largest Canadian cities.

Ottawa-Hull has been referred to as Silicon Valley North due to the concentration of high technology industries. However, it was second to Kingston both in terms of rankings for the concentration of total PhDs, as well as rankings for the concentration of science and engineering doctorates. Saskatoon was in third place in terms of science and engineering PhDs.

Possible reasons for the good performance of Ottawa-Hull could be found in the higher education sector, notably universities and colleges, in high technology industries as well as the presence of the government sector in Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec.

Looking at the other side of the coin, Saint John, Abbotsford and Oshawa were the three cities least likely to have a big labour force contingent of science and engineering PhDs relative to the size of their labour market.

To give a sense of the difference of concentration of PhDs between two cities, Oshawa and Windsor can be compared as they are both giants in Canada’s automotive industry with similar sized labour market populations. There were only 66 science and engineering PhDs for every 100,000 people in Oshawa’s labour market in comparison with 282 per 100,000 people for Windsor. In addition, Saskatoon, a city with only a slightly smaller labour market population, had over 700 science and engineering PhDs per 100,000 in 2001.

With the exception of Ottawa-Hull and Toronto, educational services was the leading sector in terms of full-time employment for science and engineering PhDs in the large cities.

In Ottawa-Hull, public administration (mainly the federal government) was the leading employer for these PhDs. In Toronto, the leading industry was professional, scientific and technical services.

Table 6
Scientific and engineering PhD concentration by large city, 2001

Toronto, Calgary and Ottawa-Hull were the three labour markets where the private sector was an important employer of scientist and engineers with PhDs in 2000.

Half of both Calgary and Ottawa-Hull’s S&E doctorates who worked full-time were employed by the private sector. In Toronto, 60% of science and engineering PhDs working full-time were employed by the private sector. This contrasts with the other large cities of Canada where it was the public sector that dominated their labour market.

Universities and colleges were the major full-time employers of science and engineering PhDs in the educational services industry. It was the leading industry of full-time employment for 23 of the 25 large cities with available information.

Table 7
Distribution of science and engineering PhDs full-time employment by large city and industry, 2000

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Highest earnings in Vancouver, lowest in Edmonton

Full-time earnings of scientists and engineers varied depending on the city of work. A comparison of the 10 largest cities shows that Vancouver had the highest adjusted average full-time employment earnings of $89,179 in the year 2000. This was largely due to higher earnings in the public sector.

Age and gender adjustment was performed to eliminate the impact of demographic distortion in the analysis of earnings by cities. Literature and current data indicate a clear correlation between earnings, age and gender. For example, earnings are higher with age and female workers earn less. In order to compare cities on an equal basis, an adjustment is done to take out the age and gender effect specific to a city. The adjusted earnings can be interpreted as the average earnings if the two cities would have the same distribution of men and women, younger and older workers.

Hamilton (Ontario) came in second with earnings of $83,555, again with higher public sector average earnings for PhDs working there.

Of the 10 largest labour markets, private sector earnings were highest in Ottawa-Hull, reaching $88,208 once age and gender were taken into account. Calgary came second with $86,711, and Winnipeg third with $84,793.

The lowest adjusted earnings in 2000 of science and engineering PhDs were found in Edmonton followed by Quebec City and Montreal. S&E PhDs working in the public sector earned the least in Ottawa-Hull and Montreal.

Table 8
Scientific and engineering PhDs full-time earnings in 2000 by  sector of employment, the 10 largest cities and Canada

Footnotes

1. Literature and current data indicate a clear correlation between earnings, age and gender. For example, earnings are higher with age and female workers earn less. In order to compare cities on an equal basis, an adjustment is done to take out the age and gender effect specific to a city. The adjusted earnings can be interpreted as the average earnings if the two cities would have the same distribution of men and women, younger and older workers.
2. See René Morissette et al, "Relative Wage Patterns among the Highly Educated in a Knowledge-based Economy", Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series, 2004, Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 11F0019M2004232, (accessed September 17, 2007) and Marc Frenette and Simon Coulombe, "Has Higher Education Among Young Women Substantially Reduced the Gender Gap in Employment and Earnings?", Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series, 2007, Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 11F0019M2007301, (accessed September 17, 2007).