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Canada’s miners are the best-paid workers in the country by a wide margin. They are also, this fall, among the worst-rewarded for staying loyal.
New payroll data from ADP Canada, drawn from the paycheques of roughly 1.6 million private-sector workers, shows gross pay for workers who stayed in their jobs in natural resources and mining rose 4.1% year-over-year in October.
Pay increases were unchanged from September and tied for eighth of the ten sectors ADP tracks. It also came in below the national figure of 4.5% for job-stayers. Only “other services” (3.3%), which includes everyone from barbers to pastors, did worse. The sector sharing eighth place with mining and the oil patch is information, the closest thing in the data to tech (but it also includes journalists, for better or worse). Tech may be feeling the first effects of growing AI use especially for junior positions, but finance, which also looks ripe for superintelligence disruption, fared much better, at 5.0%.
Statistics Canada’s payroll survey, which lags the ADP data by two months, puts average weekly earnings in mining, quarrying and oil and gas at C$2,584 in August, against C$1,355 across all industries and C$531 in accommodation and food services. A 5.4% raise on C$531 is about C$29 a week and 4.1% on C$2,584 is about C$106, so any concierge thinking of swapping a Whistler lobby for a Uranium City core shack may want to consider whether C$77 is worth it.
StatCan also shows a significant slowdown in average weekly earnings for those who arrive at work in a cage and carry a self-rescuer – up only 0.8% year-over-year. The all-industry figure rose 3.7%.
Naturally volatile
ADP’s natural resources (mainly oil and gas and a few farmworkers and loggers) and mining category has been the most volatile pay sector in the country over the past three years. It is roughly four times as volatile as manufacturing on the standard deviation of its monthly readings. In July 2023, powder monkeys and rig pigs were living high on the hog, enjoying gross pay growth of 11.5%.
The sector held the top spot for eight straight months. By March 2026 the same series had sunk to 2.9%, the lowest of any sector, where it stayed for five months. Manufacturing’s entire four-year range is no more than 2.4 percentage points while mining’s swings and roundabouts come to 8.6 points. A quick glance at NYMEX or COMEX will explain why.
The onus is on bonus
Base pay – the hourly rate or salary, stripped of overtime, bonuses and commissions – for mining job-stayers is growing at 3.0%. So is base pay in every other sector: all ten are at 3.0% or 3.1%. ADP’s technical notes explain that employers hand out raises in round numbers, and after the inflation tantrum of 2022–2023, the round number Canadian employers have settled on is three.
That matches Canada’s most recent inflation rate of 3.1%, but if you’re planning to escape winter, three won’t do: in September gasoline was 27.8% and air fares 19.4% more expensive than a year earlier. It’s cheaper to party at camp (in between operating heavy machinery, of course): StatCan says alcohol, tobacco and cannabis are only 1.6% dearer.
It’s all boom and bust in mining and gross pay follows the up and down (super)cycles. In October 2023 the sector’s gross pay growth (11.0%) outran its base pay growth (4.5%) by 6.5 points, a bonus-and-overtime gap no other sector came close to. In October 2026 the wedge is 1.1 points, and it has turned negative three times in two years, most recently in March.
FIFO FOMO
Compound the October readings from 2023 through 2026 and miners have seen gross pay grow about 27% since October 2022, the base of ADP’s first Canadian reading. That’s more than any other sector, but only just ahead of reflective-strip-free finance and leisure people, and well clear of the roughly 22% for job-stayers nationally. That one 11% year did a lot of lifting: the best time to be a miner on a fixed payroll was three years ago, the second-best was last summer and the worst was this spring. The minerals may now all be critical, more money for muckers not so much.
Loyalty is for dogs
ADP doesn’t break out job-hopping by sector, but gut feel tells you swapping one cold and remote mine for another is probably less of a temptation than crossing Bay Street to join Frobisher, Quibble & Chase because Whitcomb, Clench & Doolittle won’t make you partner.
Nationally, job-changers saw gross pay rise 10.4% in October against 4.5% for stayers, a 5.9-point premium for switching, the widest since February 2024 and more than three points wider than a year ago, when switchers’ raises bottomed at 7.1%. Base pay tells the same story: 6.0% for changers, 3.0% for stayers.
If the market is paying job-changers 10%, the arithmetic of staying put looks like a grind, least of all for mid-career workers. Among job-stayers across the economy, those aged 35 to 54 saw gross pay rise 4.4% in October, in line with the national average. Those over 55 got 2.9%. Only stayers under 25, at 10.5%, kept pace with switchers, and that is the usual early-career ramp.
For young jobseekers who don’t know what PPE is and won’t mind having it drummed into them for the rest of their working lives, there is good news. Mining is hiring. StatCan’s payroll count for mining, quarrying and oil and gas is up 3.9% year-over-year to 226,600, the fastest growth of any of the 20 sectors it tracks, in an economy where overall payroll employment grew only 0.3%.