The following charts examine some basic trends regarding the salaries of employees of Ontario public colleges earning more than $100,000 per year. This analysis is based on all public employees in the province who make over $100,000 per year. The data, commonly called Ontario’s Sunshine List, is available from the Ontario provincial government.
In order to account for the effects of inflation across years, I use the All-Items CPI, published by Statistics Canada to adjust all the salaries. Accounting for inflation allows us to validly compare people’s salaries across time in terms of the purchasing power of each dollar. For simplicity, I'm using 2023 as the base year so that the salary numbers match those published in contemporary news sources. However, the reader should be aware that the nominal salary people received in previous years is published in 2023 dollars. Because we have experienced relatively high inflation over the past few years, the real purchasing power of money made in previous years is often higher than the nominal wages people received.
All data processing and visualizations are made using R Tidy, ggplot, and plotly. It may take a few moments for the dynamic visualizations to load.
The chart below shows the number of employees employed by all of the public colleges in Ontario who made more than $100,000. The broad trend is that more college workers make over $100,000.
In part, these salary increases are because $100,000 isn't what it used to be worth when the Sunshine List began. For example, $100,000 in 1992 dollars equals about $217,000 in 2023 dollars. In other words, a $46,000 salary in 1992 would roughly have the same purchasing power as a $100,000 salary in 2023!
There is one anomaly in the data. In 2017, there was a significant drop in the number of employees. I suspect this is due to college strike actions that year. Striking faculty would not make money during that period and hence may not reach the $100,000 threshold to have their information made public. There are also relevant patterns in median salaries, discussed below.
The plot of median salary shows the median salary of workers in Ontario colleges. The median salary plot shows a sharp decrease in the purchasing power and variation of salaries in Ontario colleges. The median is also dropping as inflation makes $100,000 worth less; hence, we have an increasing number of workers on the Sunshine List.
The charts display salaries in 2023 dollars. Most college workers now make about $120,000 in 2023 dollars.
Note how the median salary in 2017 rose slightly for many institutions. This movement is consistent with workers near the threshold dropping out due to the strike, thus leaving their more highly paid colleagues to be included in the median salary calculation. However, from 2018 onward, there is a reduction in the variation in median salaries across all the colleges in Ontario. This pattern is consistent with the strike ending.
The largest salaries in Ontario universities belong to the President of the college. The Presidents who make the most are the Presidents of Conestoga College, followed by Humber, Sault, Sheridan, and George Brown Colleges.
In 2023, the President of Conestoga College made a higher salary than any other college President in Ontario. The following chart shows how job types (i.e., job titles) have different average salaries. Click one of the links below to see the average salary paid to employees at different colleges.