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The Analysis

This analysis explores the salary distributions of Canadian Public Service Employees in employment equity groups. For more information and to access the scripts used to produce this analysis, visit the project’s GitHub repository or see our publication in the 2023 ISI World Statistical Congress proceedings.

The Data

The data represents pre-tax salary ranges excluding bonuses and promotions, publicly available here. Each data series from 2017 to 2022 represents the salaries of public servants (excluding the CRA) at a single time point, not reflecting changes across an entire year.

The collection of the data used in this analysis follows standards set by the Employment Equity act, meaning that 4 “equity-deserving groups” (defined as women, indigenous people, people with disabilities, and visible minorities) are surveyed. This data is particularly interesting as it is disaggregated, meaning that additional questions to used identify subgroups within the equity-deserving groups were included in the survey. Therefore, when information about the visible minority group is presented, Black employees (but not Indigenous employees) are included.

Please note that this data was imputed for suppressed numbers (see here for more information).

Limitations

This analysis cannot account for the effects of additional factors such as age, gender, job qualification, and tenure. The data in it’s current form is also not amenable to calculating measures of uncertainty and determining statistical difference.

Conclusions

This analysis indicates that additional challenges may be faced by Black public servants in the Government of Canada. The results also highlight that more information may be able to be yielded from further investigation into the Treasury Board’s disaggregated microdata.

A Call to Action on Anti-Racism, Equity, and Inclusion has already been made as of 2021, encouraging those in positions of power to take action to address racism and discrimination in the Federal Public Service. The anecdotal experiences of Black public servants which are validated by this analysis must be taken seriously and continued to be quantified via further analysis of the available data.

Acknowledgements

This analysis could not have been completed without the help of Brittny Vongdara, Dr. Martin Nicholas, and Shamir Kanji.

Disclaimer

The opinions contained on this website are personal, and not a reflection of our employers.