Comparing Government and Private Sector Compensation in Alberta, 2021

Main Conclusions

• Using data on individual workers from January to December 2021, this report estimates the wage differential between the government and private sectors in Alberta. It also evaluates four non-wage benefits for which data are available to quantify differences in compensation between the two sectors.
• After controlling for factors like gender, age, marital status, education, tenure, size of firm, job permanence, immigrant status, industry, occupation, and full- or part-time status, the authors found that Alberta’s government-sector workers (federal, provincial, and local) enjoyed a 5.6% wage premium, on average, over their private-sector counterparts in 2021. When unionization status is factored into the analysis, the wage premium for the government sector declines to 2.6%.
• Available data on non-wage benefits suggest that the government sector enjoys an advantage over the private sector. For example, 70.7% of government workers in Alberta are covered by a registered pension plan, compared to 19.2% of private-sector workers. Of those covered by a registered pension plan, 94.9% of government workers enjoyed a defined-benefit pension compared to 33.0% of private-sector workers.
• In addition, government workers retire earlier than their private-sector counterparts— about 1.5 years on average—and were less likely to lose their jobs in 2021.
• Moreover, full-time workers in the government sector lost more work time in 2021 for personal reasons (14.4 days on average) than their private-sector counterparts (8.9 days).