Income Percentiles in Montreal: Where Your Income Ranks

The average and median are covered in full on the Montreal average income page. This page is for the next question: how far up or down the Montreal distribution a particular income sits. Montreal combines aerospace, pharmaceuticals, video games, finance and four universities with a large student population and many lower-paid service jobs, and the percentile table shows the result. Further down are the ratios that show how spread out Montreal incomes are next to Quebec’s and Canada’s, the six-figure shares, what local jobs pay, how far a median income goes against Montreal rents and home prices, and the Quebec and federal tax on it. The income percentiles overview explains the method.

Montreal income percentile table

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 $40,800, versus this table’s interpolated $39,500, a normal margin for bracket interpolation. A percentile shown as “$150,000+” falls in the open-ended “$150,000 and over” bracket: it is at least $150,000, and the table can’t place it more precisely.

Values are for the Montreal census metropolitan area, including Laval and the South Shore, for income earned in 2020; students with part-time income are counted, which weighs on the lower rows.

Montreal, Quebec and Canada

Source: Statistics Canada Table 98-10-0064, 2020 income year (2021 Census), interpolated from published income brackets. The 99th percentile is the floor of the open-ended “$150,000 and over” bracket for all three geographies, so no meaningful difference can be computed at that row.

Quebec’s distribution has a high floor: its 10th percentile, $10,700, is 39% above Canada’s $7,700. Montreal’s 10th percentile, $8,900, falls between the two, and its median of $39,500 is the same as Canada’s and below Quebec’s. Dividing through, the Montreal median is 4.4 times the 10th percentile, against 3.7 in Quebec and 5.1 in Canada, and the 90th percentile ($97,500) is 2.47 times the median, against 2.34 and 2.61. The city’s incomes are more spread out than the province’s at both ends, though less than the country’s.

Montrealers with six-figure incomes

On 2023 tax returns, 13.8% of Montreal-area residents with income reported $100,000 or more, above the Quebec figure (12.2%) and below the national one (14.8%).

Montreal jobs and where their pay falls

The 2025 Labour Force Survey counted 2,409.9 thousand people working in the Montreal area; by industry, the largest groups were in wholesale and retail trade, health care and social assistance and professional, scientific and technical services. Manufacturing held 9.7% of jobs, 1.16 times its share across all CMAs, and information, culture and recreation, the sector that takes in film, broadcasting and publishing, 5.1%, or 1.16 times its all-CMA share.

Wages by industry come from Quebec-wide figures. In 2025, Quebec’s manufacturing employees had a median of $1,226.40 a week, 9% above the median for all employees in the province, and information, culture and recreation employees $1,000.00, 11% below it. Over 52 weeks those come to about $63,773 and $52,000, both higher than the $45,640 median income on Montreal tax returns for 2023.

Job Bank’s Montreal economic region is drawn differently from the census metropolitan area, so its wages describe a somewhat different area. There, the pharmacist median was 10% above the Canadian figure and the plumber median 17% above it, while software developers were 5% below and aerospace engineers 5% below.

Montreal rents and home prices against the median

After tax, the median Montrealer aged 15 and over had $40,500 in 2024 (people with no income included), the same as the Canadian median. Rents are lower than in Toronto or Vancouver. In CMHC’s 2025 survey, a Montreal two-bedroom averaged $1,364 a month, 34% below Toronto’s $2,056 and 42% below Vancouver’s $2,367, and a one-bedroom $1,200, with 3.3% of units vacant. Twelve months in that one-bedroom come to 36% of the individual after-tax median; a two-bedroom year is 23% of the $70,100 median for families and unattached individuals. See Montreal rents and cost of living in Montreal for the rest of a budget.

Buying is a different calculation. Centris data for the Montreal CMA in September 2026 put the median single-family house at $635,000 and the median condo at $430,000. With the minimum down payment, qualifying alone under the stress test takes about $143,600 of gross income for the house and $99,700 for the condo (method). The house figure is above $100,000, which 13.8% of Montreal-area residents with income reported; the condo figure is above $75,000, reported by 25.6%. The Montreal housing market page follows these prices month by month.

Quebec and federal tax on a Montreal median income

Quebec runs its own income tax, with a first bracket of 14% up to $54,345 and a basic personal amount of $18,952, larger than the federal $16,452. Quebec residents also have basic federal tax cut by a 16.5% abatement. For the area’s median total income of $45,000 (2024), earned as wages in 2026, Quebec tax would be about $3,386, more than the $2,765 of federal tax after the abatement. Together they take 13.7% of the income, and after QPP, EI and QPIP premiums about $35,456 is left. Quebec income tax has the full bracket table.

Related pages

• A single income: the income percentile calculator set to Quebec; combined incomes: household income percentiles
• Quebec income percentiles
• Quebec City income percentiles and Toronto income percentiles
• Ottawa income percentiles
• Average and median income in Montreal
• Quebec income tax
• Income by age; gender pay gap
• All income percentile pages