The 10 most in-demand jobs in Canada

When you are dropping an average of $6,500 a year on an undergraduate degree or more than $7,000 on a graduate diploma, you want to know there is a job at the end of that long and demanding study tunnel. So, what 10 career paths are the most likely to land you a job?

CourseCompare checked in with Annie (Yazhuo) Pan, an expert in this field. Pan, who is a research officer at the Center for Industrial Relations and Human Resources at the University of Toronto, says it’s not surprising that some of the most in-demand jobs are a direct result of the pandemic. The pandemic has, after all, completely up-ended how business is done. Nor does Pan think that will change after the pandemic has run its course.

In other words, these are safe-bet courses of study that will definitely lead to a job.

“The pandemic changed a lot of things. How people work. How people run a business,” says Pan. If more people are working from home, businesses need more people to help employees work online, she explains.

Here are the 10 most in-demand careers in Canada ranked by the University of Toronto’s Center for Industrial Relations and Human Resources, plus what those jobs pay per year and where you can go to learn job-ready skills today.

No. 1: IT and Support Desk Specialists

IT support specialists give advice and help to anyone who uses a computer in a business or organization.

With more employees working from home, most often on their own equipment, in this pandemic IT specialists are more in demand than ever.

As Pan points out, no one can afford to have employees losing Zoom conference calls with potential clients or not being as productive as possible from home.

And Pan doesn’t expect the demand for this job classification to drop off after the pandemic. The trend to working from home will continue, she predicts.

The average salary per year for IT and support desk specialists in Canada is $49,525.