A self-selection audit

Toronto Salary Reporting Reality Check

Explore 981 anonymous base-pay disclosures from one Toronto salary thread, then compare their shape with official Statistics Canada benchmarks. All primary figures are annual Canadian dollars.

Read the comparison carefully. Reddit is a voluntary convenience sample; Statistics Canada surveys represent much broader populations. The default official benchmark covers Toronto CMA earners, including part-time and self-employed people. The full-year, full-time toggle is a closer—but still imperfect—comparison. These gaps mix reporting bias with differences in population, job mix, and pay definitions.

Disclosures

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Anonymous, rounded records

Median base pay

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StatCan comparison: —

Average base pay

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StatCan comparison: —

90th percentile

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Filtered Reddit records

At least C$100K

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StatCan: —

Filter-aware benchmark

Toronto CMA earners

2024 Statistics Canada

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Share earning C$100K+

Six-figure salaries show up far more often in the thread

Share at or above C$100,000. This is a descriptive contrast, not a causal estimate of reporting bias.

Reddit base payStatCan earnings

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Filtered Reddit disclosures

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Toronto CMA earners

Unfiltered sample

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as concentrated in the C$100K+ band

Reddit vs. StatCan earnings bands

Published Statistics Canada bands. Click a Reddit bar to filter the sample.

Statistics Canada table 11-10-0240-01, Toronto CMA, 2024 income reference year.

Reported base-pay distribution

Hover for counts; click a bar to isolate a C$25K interval.

Who reports here vs. who lives in Toronto

Age composition of disclosures compared with Toronto CMA residents age 15+ in the 2021 Census.

Education among reporters vs. Toronto adults

Disclosures with stated education compared with Toronto CMA adults age 25–64 in the 2021 Census.

Reported vs. official pay by industry

Filtered Reddit means compared with 2025 Statistics Canada wage benchmarks.

Reddit reported meanStatCan benchmark

Industry mix: reports vs. Toronto employment

A normalized view across industries with clean mappings to Toronto CMA 2025 employment.

Age-band pay profile

Median reported base pay among people who stated an age.

Who stated a gender?

Disclosure composition only—not Toronto’s workforce composition.

Industry detail

At least five filtered Reddit observations.

Industry	n	Reddit mean	StatCan / proxy

How the official benchmark responds

The population toggle changes the official comparison between all earners and full-year, full-time workers.
A stated M/F gender filter selects the matching published Statistics Canada row.
An industry filter uses Ontario full-time wages; an occupation filter uses the closest Ontario occupation group.
Age, education, arrangement, sector, and intersections without a published equivalent retain the nearest supported benchmark and are clearly labeled.

Canada / U.S. comparison

Toronto and Boston under the same filters

Both Reddit samples respond to the active page filters. Currency conversion happens before pay-band matching, so the comparison uses one consistent scale.

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Toronto Reddit median—filtered thread sample

Boston Reddit median—filtered thread sample

Toronto official—matched public benchmark

Boston official—matched public benchmark

Reported pay summary

Median, average, and 90th percentile for the two filtered Reddit samples.

Official pay summary

Median, average, and modeled 90th percentile from the closest comparable official statistics.

Exact comparison table

All money values use this site’s native currency.

Metric	Toronto / Canada	Boston / U.S.

High-earner concentration

Share at or above the currency-equivalent 100K threshold. Official shares use published bands with interpolation inside the open top band.

Official benchmark

Original Toronto salary thread ↗Original Boston salary thread ↗

What this comparison can—and cannot—say

The Toronto thread is much richer than the broader earnings population at the C$100K threshold.
It cannot separate who uses Reddit from who chooses to disclose, nor adjust for occupation, hours, experience, or employer mix all at once.
Industry pay benchmarks are Ontario-wide averages for full-time employees, not Toronto medians.
Age and education population comparisons come from the 2021 Census and have different scopes from salary earners.

Sources and privacy

Statistics Canada 11-10-0240-01 · employment income distribution Statistics Canada 14-10-0064-01 · wages by industry Statistics Canada 14-10-0417-01 · wages by occupation Statistics Canada 14-10-0468-02 · Toronto CMA employment by industry 2021 Census Profile · Toronto CMA Bank of Canada exchange rates ACS B20002 · Boston metro median earnings ACS B20002 · U.S. median earnings

The interactive payload contains only anonymous, rounded records: no usernames, comment text, IDs, timestamps, scores, or permalinks. Pay is rounded to the nearest C$1,000 and exact age is replaced with a band.