Free sources tell you what employers are advertising in Ontario right now. Paid, dedicated surveys tell you what Ontario employers are actually paying, broken out by variables like company size, region, and industry. Which one you need depends on the decision in front of you.
If you’re sanity-checking whether an offer is roughly in the ballpark, a job board or a government wage tool is fast and free, and may be good enough. If you’re setting an official pay range, building a salary structure, or defending a compensation decision to your CFO or a pay equity audit, you need data built for that purpose, and none of the free sources were built for it. The rest of this article breaks down what each source actually gives you, and where each one runs out of road.
Free Government Sources
Job Bank’s Wage Report is the most useful free starting point for Ontario. It publishes low, median, and high hourly wages by occupation, broken out by province and by economic region (Toronto Region, Northwest Region, and so on), pulled largely from Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey and Job Vacancy and Wage Survey data.
Statistics Canada’s Job Vacancy and Wage Survey is the underlying source for a lot of Job Bank’s numbers, and it can be queried directly for average offered wages by occupation, province, and quarter.
Both are legitimate, well-documented, and free. What they don’t do is control for the variables that actually move pay within a single job title: company size, specific industry, or annual revenue. A median wage for “Purchasing/Procurement Manager” across all of Ontario blends a 40-person distributor with a 3,000-person manufacturer, and those two employers are not competing for the same candidate at the same price. Government wage data answers “what does this occupation pay in this region,” not “what does this occupation pay at a company like mine.”
Job Postings and Crowdsourced Tools
Indeed, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and Payscale are usually the first stop. However, job postings typically show hiring ranges, not what an organization ends up paying, and those ranges are often wide enough to cover almost any candidate. (We take a closer look at this in Can Job Posting Salaries Be Used for Compensation Benchmarking?) Glassdoor and Payscale layer on self-reported or modelled estimates, and they share a core problem: no verification, thin sample sizes for a given title and city, and no control for company size or industry.
All four are useful for a fast gut check. None of them are built to tell you what similarly sized Ontario employers in your industry are actually paying, because none of them collect data with that segmentation in mind.
Dedicated Compensation Surveys
Paid compensation surveys such as COIRI, Mercer, ERI, etc. are built for one job: benchmarking pay. Employers provide the data directly, and the methodology is designed around that purpose from the start.
The difference shows up in three places. First, the respondents are HR and compensation professionals reporting actual pay data for real incumbents in named roles, not job seekers guessing or applicants scanning a posting. Second, the results are segmented, so a report can show median pay for a role by company size, geographic region, industry, and annual revenue rather than one blended number. Third, the job descriptions are standardized across participating employers, so a “Purchasing/Procurement Manager” in one company’s submission is scoped the same way as in another’s, which a job title alone on a resume or posting can’t guarantee.
COIRI’s surveys are built specifically around Ontario employers, run separately for salaried, hourly, and executive roles. Mercer and ERI, for example, run broader national and international surveys that include Ontario data within a larger dataset. The trade-off for all three is that participation and pricing work differently than a free tool: COIRI’s data is available through Clarity’s paid membership tiers, while Mercer and ERI typically require survey participation or a paid subscription.
Comparing the Sources
| Source | Cost | Ontario-Specific? | Segmentation | What it actually measures |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Job Bank Wage Report | Free | Yes, by economic region | None | Wages by occupation and region, from labour force survey data |
| Statistics Canada JVWS | Free | Yes, by province | Limited (broad industry groups only) | Average offered wages by occupation |
| Job postings (Indeed, LinkedIn) | Free | Yes, if filtered by location | None | Advertised ranges, not confirmed offers |
| Glassdoor / Payscale | Free or freemium | Partial, thin sample sizes | None | Self-reported or modelled pay estimates |
| COIRI | $1,595/yr | Yes, only Ontario employers surveyed | Yes, by size, region, industry, and revenue | Actual reported pay for standardized job descriptions |
| Mercer / ERI | $2,500–$10,000+/yr, by quote | Included within broader national data | Yes, by size and industry | Actual reported pay for standardized job descriptions |
The pattern across the table is consistent: the free sources are free because they’re built from data collected for another purpose (job ads, self-reported reviews, labour force statistics) and repurposed as a wage estimate. The paid, dedicated surveys cost money because the data was collected for exactly this purpose in the first place.
Which Source Fits Which Situation
Sanity-checking a single offer or a candidate’s counter. A job board or Job Bank’s wage report is fast and usually close enough for this.
Getting a general sense of market direction. Job Bank or Statistics Canada data works well for tracking whether wages in an occupation are trending up or holding flat across a region.
Setting an official posted salary range. This is where segmented data matters most, since Ontario’s pay transparency rules mean the range itself becomes a public commitment. A blended, unsegmented figure risks setting that range too high or too low for your actual peer group, as we covered in a separate look at how to build competitive salaries.
Building or auditing a full salary structure. This needs standardized job descriptions and size- or industry-matched data, which only a dedicated survey provides. Free sources don’t have the methodology for this and shouldn’t be stretched to cover it.
Defending a compensation decision, whether to finance, leadership, or in a pay equity review. A named, citable survey source with a documented methodology carries weight that a screenshot from a job board does not.
Salary is only half of what makes an offer competitive. For how Ontario employers are approaching health coverage, retirement contributions, time off, and flexibility, see The Benefits Benchmark: What Ontario Employers Are Really Offering in 2026.
FAQ
Is free salary data reliable?
It’s reliable for what it measures. Government sources like Job Bank and Statistics Canada are methodologically sound for occupation-and-region-level wage trends. Job postings and crowdsourced tools are less reliable, since they reflect advertised or self-reported figures rather than confirmed, verified pay.
How often should I check these sources?
Government wage data updates on its own schedule, generally quarterly to annually depending on the dataset. Dedicated surveys like COIRI’s are typically published annually. For an active hiring role, checking within the last 12 months is a reasonable baseline.
What does COIRI’s data add that free sources don’t?
Segmentation by organization size, geographic region, industry, and annual revenue, using standardized job descriptions and pay figures reported directly by Ontario employers rather than modelled or self-reported estimates. It’s built specifically to answer “what does this role pay at a company like mine,” which is the question free sources generally can’t answer.