What a Program's Graduate Employment Rate Number Actually Measures
By Muntasir Minhaz • Published May 05, 2026 • Education Planning, Canadian Universities & Colleges
A university or province reports a graduate employment rate as one headline percentage, but the survey question behind it usually only asks whether you have any job, not whether that job needs your degree or pays a living wage. Read the job-relatedness and income questions inside the same survey release to see the real picture.
📩 Ontario and British Columbia each run their own graduate outcome surveys, sent out after you finish your program
The headline "percent employed" usually counts any job, full-time or part-time, related to your field or not
A separate question asks if the job relates to your program, that figure is normally lower
Full-time status and income are reported on their own lines, read them before trusting the headline number
A low survey response rate skews results toward graduates who are easiest to reach
What the headline percentage actually counts
Provincial graduate outcome surveys ask former students to report their employment status a set time after they finish a program. The headline "percent employed" figure typically counts anyone working, full-time, part-time or self-employed, against the group of graduates who responded and were available for work. Graduates who moved on to further study or were not job hunting are often set aside from that specific calculation, which pushes the reported rate higher than a simple share of every graduate who has a well-paying job in their field.
A program can post a high employed rate while a real share of its graduates work outside their field, in part-time roles, or in jobs that do not need the credential they just earned. The single percentage cannot tell you which of those is happening. You need the sub-questions underneath it.
The job-relatedness question hides in a different line
Most of these surveys ask a second question: is your current job related to your program of study. This number almost always sits lower than the plain employment rate, since it filters out graduates working outside their field entirely. Two programs can post near-identical employment rates while showing a large gap on job relatedness, and that gap tells you more about the value of the credential than the headline number does.
The relatedness answer is self-reported and subjective. A graduate might call a job "related" loosely. Treat it as a useful comparison between two programs at the same institution rather than an exact measure on its own.
Full-time status and income sit on separate lines
Look for the share of employed graduates working full-time versus part-time, and any reported income figure, typically listed separately from the headline employment percentage. A program with a strong employment rate but a low full-time share, or a wide income range, is telling you something the top-line number leaves out.
This gap is what people mean by underemployment: a graduate counted as employed while working part-time, in a field unrelated to their degree, or in a role that never asked for a degree in the first place. None of that shows in a single "percent employed" figure. It shows only in the relatedness, full-time and income lines underneath it.
Where to find these surveys
In Ontario, individual universities and the provincial government publish graduate outcome data drawn from surveys sent to recent graduates, usually available through your target university's institutional research office alongside its enrolment and retention reports. Ask that office directly for the program-level breakdown rather than a university-wide average, since faculties differ widely.
In British Columbia, the BC Student Outcomes Survey covers graduates from public post-secondary institutions across the province, with separate tables for baccalaureate graduates and for diploma, certificate and apprenticeship graduates, since the two groups are surveyed on different timelines. Ask your BC institution's institutional research office for the program-specific results.
Programs with a mandatory or built-in co-op sequence often publish their own placement statistics separately from the general graduate outcome survey. A co-op placement rate answers a narrower question, whether you secured a paid work term, not whether your career after graduation used your degree. Do not treat a strong co-op placement figure as the same signal as a strong post-graduation employment rate, they measure different things at different points.
Not every province runs an identical survey on the same schedule, so a national picture is harder to build from a single source. Statistics Canada's education and training statistics hub and the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC) both coordinate and publish education outcome data across provinces, useful if you want to compare beyond one school or one province.
How to use both numbers together
When you compare two programs, line up the employment rate and the job-relatedness rate side by side, not just one. A big gap between the two programs on relatedness but not on raw employment tells you one program places graduates into their field more consistently, even if both look similar on the headline number.
Check the response rate the survey reports, usually printed near the methodology notes. A survey with a low response rate leans toward graduates who were easy to reach, often those with stable jobs and current contact information, which can flatter the reported numbers. A response rate above roughly half the graduating class gives you more confidence in the figures than one built from a small fraction of respondents.
A short checklist before you trust the number
Find the program-level table, not just the university-wide average.
Read the employment rate together with the job-relatedness rate.
Check the full-time share and any reported income line.
Look at the response rate and how many graduates the survey actually reached.
Compare the same set of questions across every program you are weighing, not a headline number from one program and a detailed breakdown from another.