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New university graduates on P.E.I. earning well under national average

Two years after graduation, university degree holders on P.E.I. are earning 12 per cent less than their counterparts across Canada.

STEM graduates on Island in worse position

Kevin Yarr · CBC News ·
Low wages for university graduates are reflective of low wages on P.E.I. in general. (Shutterstock)

Two years after graduation, university degree holders on P.E.I. are earning 12 per cent less than their counterparts across Canada, according to a Statistics Canada study.

The study looked at graduates where they were living two years after graduating, not what province they graduated in. CBC looked at a five-year average of these results (Classes of 2012-16) in order to minimize year-to-year variations in results.

The results were not uniform by field of study.

Graduates from business, humanities, health, arts, social science and education (BHASE) programs on P.E.I. earned 93 per cent of the national average, while science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) graduates earned just 65 per cent.

That flipped the national trend for STEM versus BHASE graduates, with BHASE grads earning more than STEM grads.

Median incomes for new university graduates on P.E.I., as compared to the national average, are about the same as wages for the population as a whole.

Statistics Canada reports at $781/week, median incomes on P.E.I. were 13 per cent below the national average.

More from CBC P.E.I.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kevin Yarr

Web journalist

Kevin Yarr is the early morning web journalist at CBC P.E.I. Kevin has a specialty in data journalism, and how statistics relate to the changing lives of Islanders. He has a BSc and a BA from Dalhousie University, and studied journalism at Holland College in Charlottetown. You can reach him at kevin.yarr@cbc.ca.

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