Career development could use massive improvement!
Pros
Starting pay for recruits is really competitive....but plateaus fairly quickly. Pension, Stability, not much else really.... Pay after several years experience is much better in private sector if you are in a in-demand field....
Cons
In the EC stream, most of the EC jobs are essentially boring data verification/ Excel spreadsheet monkey copy and paste jobs that have little to no career potential for advancement outside of Statcan, Most EC positions in federal government outside StatCan require experience in economic research, policy analysis, writing papers, and doing economic/statistical modeling with some programming knowledge involved. The knowledge that you gain in MOST (but not all) EC positions at StatCan are fairly useless. There are some EC positions in the analytical studies branch where you get experience doing research and analysis but these are rare, max 100 ppl in these divisions versus 2000+ in the survey processing, national accounts and prices divisions. There are some good roles in these divisions too, but probably less than 20%. Found myself unable to apply or even be considered for other EC positions outside StatCan even for a secondment as the experience and skills developed there were too basic. Why I took the job was because it was initially advertised as an Analyst/Economist position....but I guess I should've checked more carefully before accepting the offer. Only looked at job title and pay alone, and that was enough to entice me, thinking that things would get better, but in the end, left after 3.5 years. Luckily, I had skills and prior experience in coding/programming and was able to secure a role in this area outside government. HR manager on my 2nd day even advised me on my 2nd day that if I did not like what I was doing after 2 years as a recruit, then I should quit....should've taken that advice sooner. Most recruits I know that joined StatCan that had other skills and experiences eventually quit within 2-3 years to take on jobs that were more fulfilling, higher pay and better career development. If you have any career ambitions or goals, then I would AVOID the EC stream at StatCan! I am not too familiar with the CS and MA streams, but I have heard that the training opportunities and career development are better there....some ppl from those streams have gone on to work at Google, Adobe etc. in Silicon Valley. Oh and I would not recommend the FI accounting stream either.....also kind of dead-end in sense that it would be very hard transition to industry or public accounting (ex. KPMG, E & Y etc.).
