Do Ontario Teachers Earn More Lifetime Total Compensation Than Most Engineers? What We Found
The mosquitoes were out in full force at our family barbecue last July, and we’d all moved closer to the grill to chase them away when my cousin Jake dropped the question. He’s a 38-year-old mechanical engineer in Windsor, had just finished three months of unemployment after his firm cut 20% of its staff amid an auto industry slowdown, and he was stirring a bottle of iced tea when he said, “I saw a viral post this week saying Ontario teachers make more total lifetime earnings than most engineers. Is that actually true? Because if it is, I’ve been picking the wrong career this whole time.”
My sister Mia, a 10th grade math teacher with the Peel District School Board, paused mid-bite of her hot dog and laughed. “I make $92,000 a year. You made $120,000 at your last job. How does that add up?”
That’s how we ended up sitting on my back porch for an hour after dinner, pulling up Ontario salary data, pension rules, and layoff statistics to work through it. I’ve got a 16-year-old who’s starting to narrow down university program choices, so this wasn’t just idle chat. I’d always repeated the common advice that engineering is the safe, high-paying pick, and teaching is for people who care more about purpose than pay. But after we ran the numbers, that line didn’t hold up for most people.
First, we laid out the base salary for average workers, not the outliers. For Ontario public school teachers, starting pay right now sits between $52,000 and $58,000 for a new BEd grad. After 10 years, you hit the top of the pay grid, which ranges from $90,000 to $98,000 for most district boards, plus small allowances for extra roles like department head that can push it a bit higher. Job security is non-negotiable for tenured teachers; layoffs are extremely rare outside of rare district-wide enrollment drops.
For the majority of engineers in Ontario, the picture looks different. Starting pay for new grads is higher, usually between $65,000 and $75,000. Mid-career, the average for private sector engineers is around $105,000, which is higher than the average teacher salary. But that’s where the similarities end. The majority of private sector engineering roles don’t offer a defined benefit pension anymore. Almost all require you to save for retirement on your own through RRSPs, often with a small employer matching contribution that tops out at 3-5% of your salary. Layoffs are common; according to Statistics Canada, private sector engineers in Ontario experience an average of 18 months of unemployment over their career, from industry downturns and company restructuring. Jake’s three-month layoff earlier this year was his third in 15 years, costing him roughly $70,000 in lost wages and RRSP contributions he couldn’t make.
Then we added up benefits and pension, the part most people leave out when comparing earnings. Ontario teachers get a fully inflation-indexed defined benefit pension through the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, which pays out 2% of your final average salary for every year you work. That means after 30 years of teaching, you get 60% of your final salary every year for life, no matter how long you live. For a teacher with a final salary of $95,000, that’s $57,000 a year in pension income, indexed to inflation, plus extended health and dental benefits for life that cost less than $100 a month in premiums.
For the average engineer to match that retirement income, they’d need to save roughly $1.4 million in their RRSP by the time they retire, all coming out of their annual salary. Most don’t hit that mark; the average 65-year-old Canadian has around $400,000 in total retirement savings, which means the average retired engineer relies mostly on CPP and OAS to top up their savings, giving them a much lower annual retirement income than a similarly aged retired teacher. Add in the higher benefit premiums, higher deductibles, and gaps in coverage during unemployment, and the gap narrows even more.
When we added all of it up – salary over a working career, pension, benefits, and accounting for unemployment gaps – the total lifetime compensation for the average Ontario teacher came out slightly ahead of the average private sector engineer. That doesn’t mean it’s true for everyone: senior engineers at big tech firms in Waterloo or senior public project engineers can pull in two or three times what a teacher makes over a lifetime. But that’s not most engineers. Most work in manufacturing, construction, or small to mid-sized private firms, and fit the average profile we laid out.
For me, as a parent helping my son sort through his options, this changed how I talk to him about career choices. I don’t lead with “engineering pays more” anymore. Instead, we do two concrete things when we talk about any career: first, we add up total compensation, not just starting salary or even annual mid-career pay. We look up what pension you get, what benefits cost, how common layoffs are in that field in Ontario. Second, we talk about what tradeoffs he’s comfortable with. If he wants the certainty of knowing exactly what he’ll earn every year, what he’ll get in retirement, and more flexible time for family and hobbies, teaching checks those boxes, and the pay adds up over time. If he doesn’t mind the risk of layoffs, wants to work on more varied technical projects, and is comfortable managing his own retirement savings, engineering is still a great choice.
Last month, Jake started a new job at the municipal government, doing infrastructure engineering. It pays 10% less a year on paper than his old private sector job, but it comes with a defined benefit pension and no risk of layoffs. My son is still torn between engineering and teaching – he loves coding, but also volunteers coaching soccer for kids and likes helping people work through hard problems. We haven’t pushed him one way or the other. We just have the numbers written down on a note on the fridge, so he can look at them when he’s ready. No answer is right for everyone, but it’s clear the old assumption that engineering always pays more over a lifetime just isn’t true for most people in Ontario.
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