Do Ontario Teachers Make More Lifetime Total Compensation Than Most Engineers?
The mosquito landed on my sister Sarah’s sparkling water can mid-bite, just as her 17-year-old daughter Lila looked up from her phone and asked the question we’d all been avoiding for months: “Is that Reddit thread true? Do teachers actually end up making more over their whole life than engineers?” We were three hours into our annual August backyard barbecue, the burgers were gone, and my husband was dousing the coals with a bucket of water. Sarah’s brother-in-law Dave, a civil engineer with 18 years in the private sector, leaned back in his plastic patio chair and laughed. “That’s what I’ve been seeing too. I swear if that’s true, I’m quitting to teach grade 8 math.”
Lila is in her final year of high school outside Ottawa, and she’s been torn between applying for a Bachelor of Education after undergrad and going into mechanical engineering. Her grandparents keep telling her engineering is the only path to a secure retirement, and even her guidance counselor nodded along when she mentioned teaching without pushing back on the assumption that it pays far less long-term. When this rumour started popping up on her TikTok and Reddit feeds, none of us knew what to believe – so after the barbecue ended and the other guests left, we dragged our pay stubs into the kitchen and started adding up the numbers most people never count.
Right off the bat, Dave takes home a lot more every month. That’s the first thing everyone sees. A new public school teacher in Ontario starts around $58,000, and tops out at about $96,000 for elementary after 10 years on the salary grid – which Sarah is almost at. Dave started at $62,000 18 years ago, now makes $128,000, which lines up almost exactly with the median mid-career engineer salary in Ontario. On paper, he makes $32,000 more a year right now. But that’s where the obvious numbers end.
First we added pension contributions, the hidden chunk of compensation that never hits your take-home pay. Sarah’s pay stub shows the Ontario government puts 14.1% of her annual salary directly into her defined benefit pension every year. Dave’s firm matches 4% of his salary into his defined contribution plan. That’s a 10% difference every single year, right off the top. Over 35 years of working, that adds up to more than $300,000 in extra employer contributions that most people never factor when comparing salaries.
Next came benefits and paid time off. Sarah pays $18 a month for full health, dental, and vision coverage for her whole family, with 80% coverage for physiotherapy and fully covered eye exams. Dave pays $387 a month for his family’s plan, and it doesn’t cover most physiotherapy or eye exams at all. For paid time off, Sarah gets 11 paid sick days a year that roll over indefinitely, plus two weeks of Christmas break, two weeks of March break, and eight weeks of summer – even after counting 10 required professional development days, that’s 14 more weeks of paid time off a year than Dave, who gets four weeks of vacation annually. That’s equivalent to a 3% annual pay raise most people never count.
The biggest gap came when we looked at retirement. Sarah’s pension is guaranteed: after 30 years of working, she’ll get 60% of her average top five years salary every year for the rest of her life, indexed to inflation. That means even if inflation spikes to 10% again, her payment goes up, and if she lives to 90, she still gets a full cheque every month with no market risk. If Dave retires at 65 with the average defined contribution pension balance for Ontario engineers, he’ll have around $1.4 million saved. That sounds like a lot, but if he wants the same guaranteed, inflation-adjusted income Sarah will have, that balance only translates to around $55,000 a year – roughly what Sarah can expect.
When we added everything up – working salary, all employer contributions to benefits and pensions, and retirement payouts over 20 years of retirement – the average public school teacher in Ontario comes out to around $6.5 million in total lifetime compensation. The average Ontario engineer comes in around $6.1 million. So the rumour is mostly true, for most people. That said, it’s an average: if you’re a senior engineer at a big tech firm or a large construction company, you’ll make far more than that. If you leave teaching before you’re vested, or work part-time your whole career, you’ll end up with much less.
What I didn’t expect was how this changes the conversation for parents helping kids pick career paths. Instead of just repeating the old line that engineering pays better, there are three concrete questions anyone can ask when comparing options, no fancy math required. First, ask how much your employer contributes to your retirement every year, not just what you take home in each pay cheque. That number is easy to find on any pay stub, and it’s a huge part of your total compensation most people miss. Second, ask if your retirement income is guaranteed for life, or if it depends on stock market performance. Third, add up what you pay out of pocket for benefits each month, and count how many paid days off you get – time off isn’t just a “nice to have”, it’s real money you don’t have to pull from savings when you get sick or need to take your kid to a doctor’s appointment.
Lila still hasn’t made up her mind. She signed up to volunteer in a local grade 3 classroom two afternoons a week this fall to test out the day-to-day work, and she’s still keeping her engineering application open. Sarah points out the numbers don’t count the three hours she spends grading and answering parent emails most nights, unpaid. Dave says he’s fine with a lower total lifetime compensation if he rarely has to take work home. The numbers check out for the average, but they don’t pick a career for you. We’re all just glad we actually added it up instead of repeating what everyone has always assumed.
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