JobLeads analysis of 36,522 Canadian job seekers reveals the behavioural mechanism turning high ambitions into a persistent pay gap
TORONTO, 10 APRIL 2025 Canadian women are not underselling themselves at the starting line. They set upper salary expectations 34% higher than men — yet they still end up applying to jobs that pay less. A new analysis by JobLeads, an online job search platform, tracked exactly where that ambition gap becomes a pay gap.
Released ahead of Canadian Equal Pay Day, the research analysed real job search behaviour from 36,522 Canadian users between October and December 2025.
KEY FINDINGS
- Women set upper salary expectations 34% higher than men (CAD $162,492 vs. $121,488), yet apply to jobs with a CAD $3,104 (4%) lower median salary (CAD $68,274 vs. $71,378).
- 76% of Canadian men who clicked on a job submitted an application, versus 64% of women — a 12% gap that is the single largest behavioural gender gap in the entire dataset, and the primary mechanism converting high expectations into lower offers.
- Finance carries the largest industry-level pay gap: women apply to roles paying nearly 10% less than men (CAD $78,961 vs. $87,523 median), despite women accounting for 54% of finance job seekers.
- In legal — a field that is 65% female — women still apply to roles paying 6.9% less (CAD $81,449 vs. $87,523 median), demonstrating that majority representation alone does not close the gap.
- Women apply to roles requiring 31% soft skills versus 28% for men — a difference that costs women CAD $7,998 at the median salary level.
- 33% of women search for part-time roles versus 23% of men, a gap likely driven by caregiving demands.
- Women and men opt into hybrid work at nearly identical rates (13% each), yet men in hybrid roles earn CAD $8,287 more.
One notable exception: in engineering — the sector with the lowest female participation at 27% — women apply to roles with a CAD $1,645 higher median salary than men, the only industry where the gap reverses.
“This is not a story about women expecting less or reaching lower. Canadian women reach higher, and something in the process pulls them back down. They browse ambitiously, set bold salary expectations, then pull back at the point of application — clustering into part-time, soft-skill-heavy, and lower-paying roles. The pay gap in Canada is not built from low expectations. It is built from a system that converts high expectations into compromised outcomes.” — Jan Hendrik von Ahlen, Managing Director, JobLeads
The full dataset, including industry-by-industry breakdowns, salary benchmarks, application behaviour data, and skill composition analysis, is available here.
METHODOLOGY
Behavioural data from 36,522 JobLeads users in Canada (October–December 2025). Gender was inferred using probabilistic name-gender mapping.
ABOUT JOBLEADS
Founded in 2007 in Hamburg by Christian von Ahlen, Martin Schmidt, and Jan Hendrik von Ahlen, JobLeads is a global career platform empowering professionals to take control of their careers and discover new opportunities. Today, more than 12 million members in over 40 countries rely on JobLeads’ independent, data-driven tools and insights to successfully plan their next career move. For more information, visit www.jobleads.com