Given the current labour shortage, it’s more important than ever to be competitive. This means studying the market. Here are three tools that provide useful information. They’re complementary, so use all three for the best results.
Labour Market Information – Emploi Québec (LMI)
LMI is an important tool that provides extensive information about jobs, in terms of both the usual duties and the requirements of a given position. It’s very useful for ensuring you’re looking at the data for the right position. You can also consult the minimum, median and maximum wages paid for the position and compare data by region.
Total compensation and salaries – Institut de la statistique du Québec (ISQ)
The ISQ provides information on benchmark-job compensation by the type of business and the complexity level of each position. Each complexity level corresponds to a type of duty, a decision making level and the number of years of experience. This is partly what differentiates ISQ data from LMI data, which makes no distinction between junior and senior employees. You may not find the job you’re seeking information on in the table, but you will definitely find one to compare it with.
Corail – Collective agreements database
Collective agreements are public documents, and the Ministère du Travail, de l’Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale makes them available on the Corail platform. In union contexts, salaries and salary increases are quite often negotiated in advance, when the collective agreement is renewed. The advantage of Corail is that you can access more specific data. It’s possible to compare your business with others in the same sector, in the same region or in the same size range. Salaries are historically a little higher in unionized workplaces than non-unionized contexts. However, unionized employees must pay union dues, which is not the case in non-union environments—this could make up for the slightly lower salary of a non-union employee.