On March 24, 2023, Ontario released its 2022 sunshine list, an annual record of all public employees earning more than $100,000 per year. The list includes 5,246 U of T employees, a 5.3 per cent increase from 2021. The average salary of all U of T employees on the list came to $164,150, with the highest-paid employee — Professor and Sandra Rotman Chair in Health Sector Strategy Brian Golden — making almost $600,000. Men disproportionately appeared on the list, with women on the list making approximately $20,000 less per year than their male counterparts.
Highest earners
By fall 2020, U of T employed more than 25,000 employees, excluding teaching assistants and postdoctoral fellows. In 2022, Professors Brian Golden, Brian Silverman, and Wei-Yi (Scott) Liao earned the most, with salaries of $593,206, $520,459.40 and $518,912, respectively. All three professors hold positions in the Rotman School of Management.
Out of U of T’s presidents and vice-presidents, Edward Sargent — vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives — earned the most, with a salary of $448,796.60. President Meric Gertler earned the second most in this sector and the 24th most out of all U of T employees.
Chief Librarian Larry Laul Alford earned a salary of $334,252.1, making him the highest earner out of the 87 librarians on the list. In the communications sector, Vice-President Advancement and Acting Vice-President of Communications David Palmer earned the most, with a salary of $395,808. Of the 12 campus safety employees on the list, the highest paid is Michael Munroe, director of campus safety, whose salary amounted to $187,147.51.
Professors’ wages at U of T
2,973 professors — approximately 20 per cent of all faculty — made the 2022 sunshine list. Among professors, associate professors, and adjunct professors on the list, the average salary came to $189,474.50. The list reveals wide ranges in payment across fields and positions. For instance, finance professors received an average salary of $358,575.40 while English professors received, on average, a salary of $177,528.40.
Gender analysis
Based on a cross-reference of the sunshine list with a directory of names and the commonly associated genders, an independent Sunshine List website found that approximately 46 per cent of U of T employees on the list were women — approximately one per cent more than in last year’s list. These numbers do not account for nonbinary employees or employees who have gendered names that they don’t identify with. According to U of T’s Report on Employment Equity, 60.2 per cent of the university’s employees in 2021 identified as women.
Those who identified as men received an average salary of $173,930, while those who identified as women received, on average, $152,830. In 2019, U of T released a report analyzing gender pay equity for full-time tenure and teaching stream faculty, which found 1.3 per cent lower wages for women after controlling for rank, years of experience, and field. In response, the university increased salaries for tenure-stream women faculty by 1.3 per cent. However, the University of Toronto Faculty Association has called for U of T to further increase salaries for women, citing a 2019 study they conducted that, based on a regression analysis, literature review, and descriptive statistics, found a wage gap of 2.7 to 8.6 per cent.
