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64.0 per cent. Obtaining a post-secondary certificate, however, certainly does hold advantages:
72.7 per cent of working age individuals with post-secondary education were employed in 2006.
Persons with university degrees were employed at a 76.9 per cent rate. The employment rate is
virtually identical for bachelor‘s degree holders (76.8 per cent) and persons with above
bachelor‘s degree (77.1 per cent). As was the case for unemployment and the labour force
participation rate, there was a large employment rate gap between Canadians who did not finish
high school and those who did: 34.1 percentage points.
Chart 3: Employment Rate in Canada, by Highest Level of
diploma
Source: Labour Force Survey
B. Educational Attainment, Income and Productivity
If society is able to keep young people in school and increase their level of educational
attainment, it will give them the necessary tools to improve their future quality of life. The strong
correlation between labour compensation and educational attainment at a point in time is
evidence of the importance of education for individual and societal well-being. Although
education is not the sole determinant4 of individual success in the labour market, it is probably
4 It must be remembered when looking at employment income differentials that the inequalities are not all due to
educational attainment. As we will see later in the report, the Aboriginal population in Canada earns less than non-
Aboriginals at all levels of educational attainment. Holding education constant, there are many reasons why these
differences may occur, such as the availability of job opportunities, perceived or actual differences in the quality of a
given level of educational attainment, labour market discrimination, and individual preferences.