Career Attainment in Canadian Bureaucracies: Unscrambling the Effects of Age, Seniority, Education, and Ethnolinguistic Factors on Salary

Five hypotheses concerning the influence of age, seniority, expertise (education), and informal factors on salary attainment of men in bureaucratic careers in the Canadian federal administration are tested. Age, seniority, and education are positively related to salary, but relationships are stronger for the Anglophone majority than for the Francophone minority; older Francophones are behind their Anglophone equivalents. The departure of able Francophones from the federal administration, discrimination against them, and the state of French-Canadian education a generation ago are assessed as explanations of the Francophone disadvantage. Although there was a fallout of able Francophones in the early 1960s and an educational gap between Francophones and Anglophones in the fields of science and engineering, career discrimination is the primary factor accounting for salary differentials.