AI Analysis: Standard work week for salaried employees, by industry, monthly, unadjusted for seasonality

Executive Summary

Statistics Canada's Table 14100211 tracks the standard work week for salaried employees across 423 Canadian industries from January 2001 to January 2026, revealing a remarkably stable and symmetric distribution centered around 38.7 hours per week with very little variation across most sectors. Despite this overall stability, the dataset exposes dramatic extremes — from 79.7 hours per week in entertainment management to 17.2 hours in ground transportation — and a modest long-term decline of 0.7 hours in the industrial aggregate work week over the 25-year period.

Key Findings

• The average standard work week for salaried employees is 38.68 hours, with a median of 38.80 hours, confirming a near-perfectly symmetric distribution tightly centered around the traditional 40-hour week.
• The middle 50% of all industry observations fall within a narrow interquartile range of just 2.4 hours (Q1: 37.4 hrs, Q3: 39.8 hrs), indicating that most Canadian industries cluster closely around the national average.
• The industrial aggregate work week declined modestly from 37.4 hours in January 2001 to 36.7 hours in January 2026 — a drop of only 0.7 hours over 25 years, suggesting structural stability in Canadian work week norms.
• The most extreme high outlier is Agents and managers for artists, athletes, and entertainers, recording 79.7 hours per week in March 2001 — nearly double the national average — while the lowest is Other transit and ground passenger transportation at 17.2 hours in February 2009, likely reflecting the 2008–09 recession.
• A total of 7,401 records fall outside the IQR-defined normal range of 33.8–43.4 hours per week, representing statistically significant anomalies concentrated in entertainment management and specialized transportation sectors.
• Vending machine operators hold the highest long-term average work week at 51.3 hours, while Technical and trade schools have the shortest at 30.2 hours — a gap of 21.1 hours between the most and least demanding industries by this measure.
• Of the 125,244 total records spanning 301 months and 423 NAICS industry categories, 15.1% are missing, likely due to data suppression or estimation flags for certain industries and time periods.