CCPA Report Highlights Fairer Pay in Canada's Public Sector

A new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) finds that Canada’s public sector continues to provide more equitable pay for women and new Canadians than the private sector.

Using 2025 Labour Force Survey data and adjusting for 15 worker characteristics, the study found that the public-sector gender pay gap remains roughly half that of the private sector. Women working in the public sector earned 4.9 per cent more than equivalent women in the private sector, while private-sector women were the lowest-paid of the four gender and sector groups examined.

The differences are particularly striking in some occupations. Senior executives earned 35 per cent more in the private sector, while educators and community-service workers earned about eight per cent more in the public sector. The report also found no “motherhood penalty” for public-sector women, while women with children in the private sector earned 0.9 per cent less than comparable women without children.

The report also cautions that efforts to bring Canadian public-sector pay in line with the private sector could actually widen existing inequalities by reducing relative pay for women and new Canadians while increasing compensation at the executive level.

Read the full CCPA report, Fairer Pay in the Public Sector: Gender and New Canadian Pay Gaps in the Public and Private Sectors, 2025, here.