Largest employers, part II

Last month, we looked at the largest  employers of CAs in public practice. More than half of all CAs, however, work outside public practice — 52% work in industry or academia and 7% in a government or Crown corporation.

So where do most of these CAs work? As you might expect, CAs in industry and academia are spread out across a wide range of organizations and fields. In fact, only eight companies employ more than 100 CAs and the top 20 companies account for only about 2,500 CAs.

The chart below ranks the largest employers of CAs in industry and academia based on the number of CAs they employ. Not surprisingly, Canada’s financial services sector is well represented. The country’s largest banks hold the top five positions and the list includes six other financial services companies.

Outside financial services, Bell/BCE is the largest employer of CAs and is the only nonfinancial services company that has more than 100 CAs. These CAs, however, are divided among the organization’s many divisions and subsidiaries. The only other nonfinancial services companies in the top 10 are in the technology sector: IBM and Nortel. Université du Québec is the only academic institution to make the list, with 74 CAs across its many campuses.

In a future column, we’ll look at CAs in government and Crown corporations.

Ranking of industry/academia companies by number of CAs employed

John Tabone is CICA's manager of innovation