Canada’s education gap is costing Indigenous communities—closing it starts with access

This report was researched and written by Magnet’s Data and Technology Solutions team. In conjunction with Indigenous History Month, Magnet has drawn on our experience delivering digital learning and work-integrated learning programs to explore how these approaches might benefit Indigenous Canadians and support an inclusive future workforce that respects Indigenous identity, knowledge, and connection to the land. 

Canada is facing a workforce paradox. At a time when employers across the country are struggling with labour shortages, one of the fastest-growing and youngest populations in Canada still faces systemic barriers to opportunity. Of Canada’s 1.8 million Indigenous people, 41% are under the age of 25, representing an enormous source of future talent, leadership, and growth.

For many Indigenous learners, completing post-secondary education often means leaving home and leaving community, culture, and support systems. In remote and northern regions, the absence of local education infrastructure turns geography into one of the most significant barriers to economic participation. The challenge is not a lack of ambition, ability, or willingness to work, but a matter of access to education and career pathways.

This matters because in today’s labour market, education increasingly determines access not just to better wages, but to flexibility, choice, and career resilience. Closing the education gap is both an economic imperative and a critical part of building a more inclusive, adaptive labour market in Canada.

The opportunity before us is clear: if Canada can build trusted, culturally relevant pathways to education, skills development, and digital learning, we can ensure Indigenous talent is not forced to choose between career success and community belonging.

The education gap is a geography gap

First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples have distinct histories, cultures, and geographic realities that shape access to education and employment. Geography, in particular, explains significant differences in post-secondary attainment. According to the 2021 Census:

• First Nations number just over one million in Canada, with 41% living on-reserve.
• Métis communities, concentrated in Western Canada and Ontario, account for just over 600,000 people with significant representation in urban centres such as Winnipeg, Calgary, and Edmonton.
• Inuit number 70,000, 69% of which reside in Inuit Nunangat stretching across the Arctic and sub-arctic, where there are no post-secondary institutions. 

Overall, around 49% of Indigenous adults aged 25-64 have a post-secondary credential, compared to 68% of non-Indigenous Canadians. Breaking this data down further illustrates the powerful influence of geography. 56% of Metis, who live closer to city-centres, have a post-secondary qualification. That number drops to 45% for First-Nations, including those on-reserve, and only 33% among Canada’s Inuit. 

Another paradox emerges here: Staying on the land matters to Indigenous Canadians and allows them to retain a vital connection to family, culture, and identity in a way that is critical to well-being. To access post-secondary education, or even a high school education, however, leaving home is often the only option for many. 

The education gap for Indigenous communities is also at the root of another gap: access to jobs that can be done remotely. These include positions classed as professional services, finance, health administration, and civil service roles, jobs typically associated with greater stability and higher pay. 

Statistics Canada tracked how many workers could feasibly do their job from home. 60.1% of jobs requiring a bachelor’s degree could be done remotely, compared to 19% for those requiring a trades certificate and 25% for those requiring a high school diploma. A bachelor’s degree potentially opens the door to a wider range of jobs that can be done remotely, and for higher wages, while also affording Indigenous Canadians the option of staying on their land and maintaining essential community and cultural connections. 

The equalizer: data shows the connection between education and opportunity

The influence of education on earnings and career mobility isn’t hypothetical, but borne out in the data. While the employment rate for Indigenous Canadians as captured in the 2021 Census was 61%, compared to 74% for non-Indigenous Canadians, that gap disappeared almost entirely when comparing those with a bachelor’s degree. In this scenario, the employment rate was 82.6% for Indigenous people and 82.5% for non-Indigenous Canadians. 

Indigenous adults with a bachelor’s degree were also more likely to work in professional occupations than non-Indigenous adults with the same credential, 56 versus 49%. Ultimately, the problem remains access to the level of education that creates access to opportunities in those fields that offer better pay and stability, and which can more easily be done remotely. 

The numbers around education and wage and career outcomes are positive, but many Indigenous Canadians are still being left behind. In 2024, First Nations workers off-reserve earned $33.37 per hour on average, Métis earned $35.67, and Inuit earned $33.42, all against $37.77 for non-Indigenous workers. 

Group	Avg. Hourly Wage (2024)	Low-Pay Rate	In Management
First Nations (off-reserve)	$33.37	23.6%	5.8%
Métis (in provinces)	$35.67	~18.5%	7.6%
Non-Indigenous	$37.77	18.5%	9.4%

Source: Statistics Canada, Quality of Employment in Canada, summer 2025 update (Cat. 14-28-0001); QoE among First Nations and Métis, 2022 (Cat. 41-20-0002). Core-aged workers 25–54.

In 2020, 18.8% of Indigenous people were in low-income households, compared to 10.7% of non-Indigenous Canadians. In Winnipeg, home to Canada’s largest urban Indigenous population, 16% of Indigenous residents were in poverty in 2020, nearly twice the rate for non-Indigenous neighbours in the same city. 

Those are real differences with real consequences, but when researchers adjust for education level, age, and gender, the gap becomes statistically indistinguishable. The wage problem is an education distribution and access problem, which makes it solvable. 

Training delivered closer to home can translate into jobs closer to home

Creating more remote work opportunities for Indigenous Canadians in remote communities is a worthy and necessary goal, but it’s not the only goal. Many remote and northern communities offer jobs in construction, health care, hospitality, and natural resource management. 

Still, even for those in-person jobs, communities have relied heavily on interjurisdictional employees (IJEs), those that work in one region but reside in another. Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, which make up a large portion of Inuit Nunangat, have the highest percentage of IJEs (23.2 and 23.6 % respectively based on 2002-2019 data).

Signal49 projects that by 2045 we can expect a real GDP growth of 41% in the Yukon, 20% in Northern Ontario, and 8% in Nunavut. Employment is also expected to increase by 18% in Nunavut by 2045, meaning the demand for local workers will grow. 

Expanding investment in and access to apprenticeships, college programs, and trades training delivered close to where people live can help address these shortages.

College programs and apprenticeships are the most direct pathways into these jobs, and they’re already the most common credential among Indigenous workers. Programs and policy need to leverage this reality and its potential by making those pathways more accessible locally, building bridges into further credentials, and prioritizing hiring local talent who have completed relevant training.

The goal is not to create a single pathway to success, but to expand choice by enabling Indigenous learners to pursue careers in local economies, and access remote opportunities in the broader economy. Right now, most people in remote communities don’t have either option.

Trusted pathways must be built on trust and cultural awareness 

The education gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians is a result of structural barriers that make closing the gap more than just a matter of delivering training close to home or even delivering training digitally. Without meaningfully addressing these systemic factors, greater educational opportunities won’t have their intended effect. 

Streamlined funding for Indigenous students 

Navigating federal, provincial, and band-administered funding streams can be complex, particularly for first-generation students who may not have a family roadmap to guide them, highlighting the importance of clearer pathways and stronger support systems.

Culturally relevant learning environments

Curricula that skips Indigenous perspectives, campuses with no Indigenous cultural presence, and support systems that don’t account for the particular circumstances of Indigenous learners erode retention even among students who arrive fully motivated. These investments need to be funded through  stable, long-term commitments rather than short-term grants. 

Rebuilding trust

Residential school trauma, the disruption to families, and the severing of cultural identity show up in educational participation data today. The 2022 Indigenous Peoples Survey captures the very real and still present effects of this system. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action documents in detail how residential schools fostered lasting distrust of educational institutions that shapes participation today.

Conclusion: Indigenous people thrive with access to education–bringing it home can scale the success we’ve already seen

The education gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians is well documented, along with its costs in wages and opportunity. Expanding locally delivered education, apprenticeships, digital skills training, and trusted pathways into employment can help Indigenous learners pursue careers while maintaining connections to their communities, cultures, and lands.

Canada’s path to reconciliation is complex, but dismantling barriers to education, with the following principles as the foundation, offers a roadmap to better social and economic outcomes for Indigenous communities.

Train people where they live

For a large share of Canada’s Indigenous population, community-based delivery, hybrid programs, and investment in Indigenous colleges and institutes offer a starting point where no options for training exist. College programs and apprenticeships delivered locally open up jobs based in the community and, when combined with pathways to further credentials, the remote-work economy too. 

Embed digital skills into training

As both trades and professional work become more technically demanding, digital literacy needs to be part of training from the start across apprenticeships, college programs, and degree pathways. It can’t be treated as a prerequisite that students must somehow arrive with. That’s a fixable problem if addressed at the training level.

Use Indigenous-owned businesses as part of the infrastructure

Statistics Canada found that Indigenous-owned businesses hire Indigenous workers at far higher rates than non-Indigenous-owned firms. These businesses are community anchors, proven pipelines for Indigenous employment, and practical proof that economic participation and staying home are compatible. Supporting Indigenous entrepreneurship as a workforce strategy, not just as economic development, is one of the most direct investments available.

What comes next is meaningful: sponsoring apprenticeships, creating co-op placements, and building the kinds of sustained relationships that make a first job the start of a career rather than a one-off placement. 

Indigenous Canadians want to work. They want to learn. They want to do both from home and from the communities where the work already is. The data shows that this is achievable if supported by the right investments.

Data Sources and References

Statistics Canada

Cat. 75-006-X (Oct. 2023) — Melvin, A. Postsecondary educational attainment and labour market outcomes among Indigenous peoples in Canada. Insights on Canadian Society.

Cat. 75-006-X (Jan. 2025) — Far from home: High school completion for First Nations people, Métis, and Inuit in remote communities, 2016 to 2021.

The Daily dq210804b (Aug. 4, 2021) — Working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, April 2020 to June 2021. Chart 2: telework feasibility by education level.

Cat. 41-20-0002 (Apr. 2024) — Quality of employment among First Nations people living off reserve and Métis, 2022.

Cat. 14-28-0001 (Aug. 2025) — Quality of Employment in Canada, summer 2025 update.

Table 36-10-0695-01 — Indigenous peoples economic account, 2022 (Apr. 2025) and 2023 (Dec. 2025).

Economic and Social Reports, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Jan. 2026) — Indigenous employment and income in Indigenous-owned businesses.

Economic and Social Reports, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Feb. 2025) — Frenette, M. The changing nature of work in Canada: 1987 to 2024.

ESR (Oct. 2021) — Mehdi & Morissette. Working from home in Canada: What have we learned so far? Cat. 36-28-0001.

Deng, Messacar & Morissette (2020) — Running the Economy Remotely: Potential for Working from Home. Cat. 45-28-0001.

Cat. 98-200-X2021009 (Nov. 2022) — Disaggregated trends in poverty from the 2021 Census.

Cat. 11-627-M2022057 (Sept. 2022) — First Nations people, Métis and Inuit in Canada: Key results, 2021 Census.

The Daily dq221130a (Nov. 30, 2022) — Indigenous high school attainment.

Other Sources

Canada. Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. (2016) – Federal spending on primary and secondary education on First Nations reserves. publications.gc.ca 

Indigenous Services Canada (2022) — Socio-economic gaps between Indigenous Peoples and the non-Indigenous population: 2021 Census highlights.

Future Skills Centre (2024) — Digital skills and the skills gap. fsc-ccf.ca

Future Skills Centre (2025) — AI and the Shifting Landscape of Future Skills. fsc-ccf.ca

Future Skills Centre / Signal49 Research (2023) — Learning from One Another: Labour Market Needs in Northern Ontario, Yukon, and Nunavut. fsc-ccf.ca

Signal49 Research (2024–2025) — GDP and employment forecasts for Yukon, Nunavut, and Northern Ontario 2024–2045. signal49.ca

Colleges and Institutes Canada (Jun. 2024) — By the Numbers: Indigenous Post-Secondary Education in Canada.

Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (2020) — Inuit Post-Secondary Education Strategy.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015) — Calls to Action.

Future Skills Centre (2023) — Mapping the Landscape: Indigenous Skills Training and Jobs in Canada. fsc-ccf.ca