Income Percentile Calculator Canada

How the income percentile calculator works

Enter your total income for the year: employment income plus any self-employment, investment, pension and government benefit income, before tax. The calculator compares it with every Canadian aged 15 and over by default. You can narrow the comparison to your province or to your age group; if you choose both, it uses the age group, because Statistics Canada doesn’t publish this data by age within each province. The comparison is for one person’s income. For a couple or family, the household income percentiles compare combined income instead.

A result of the 90th percentile means 90% of the people in the group you chose had less income than the amount you entered. The data comes from the 2021 Census (income year 2020): Statistics Canada publishes the number of people in each income bracket, the calculator interpolates a dollar threshold for each percentile within those brackets, and then adjusts the thresholds for inflation with the Consumer Price Index so the comparison is in today’s dollars. The Census brackets stop at “$150,000 and over”, so above that point the calculator can say only that an income is at or above that level. How the percentile tables are built is explained in more detail on the income percentiles overview.

Canadian income percentile table

The Census thresholds for Canada, in income-year dollars before the calculator’s inflation adjustment:

Source: Statistics Canada Table 98-10-0064, 2020 income year (2021 Census). Values are interpolated from published $5,000-wide income brackets, not exact published percentiles. StatCan’s own published median for the same population is $41,200, versus this table’s interpolated $39,500, a normal margin for bracket interpolation. The 99th percentile reflects the floor of the open-ended “$150,000 and over” bracket, not a precise estimate.

Province and city tables in the same format are on each place’s page: Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island and the territories (Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut), and for Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Quebec City, Hamilton and Kitchener-Waterloo.

The top 10%, 5% and 1%

In the Census table above, the 90th and 95th percentiles mark the entry points to the top 10% and top 5% of income earners. The top 1% lies inside the open “$150,000 and over” bracket, so the Census can’t give its threshold precisely.

Tax-return data, which is more recent, shows how many Canadians reach each six-figure level. In 2023:

How many people make $100,000 or more in Canada?

In 2023, 4,543,830 Canadians reported income of $100,000 or more, out of 30,649,450 people with income. What a six-figure salary means in practice is covered in is $100,000 a good salary?, and the broader question in what is a good salary in Canada?

Comparing by age

Income rises through the early working years, peaks in mid-career and falls in retirement, so a percentile within your own age group can say more than one against everyone. The age group option in the calculator does that comparison; income by age in Canada shows the average and median for each age group.

Median, average and wealth

The median, the 50th percentile, is the income in the middle; the average is pulled up by a small number of very high incomes. Both are covered on the median income and average income pages. Income percentiles measure a year’s income, not wealth: to compare what you own minus what you owe, use the net worth percentile calculator. How much income a home purchase takes is worked out in income needed to buy a home.

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