The Burden  of Care

Addressing Challenges  in Employment in the Nonprofit Sector

This report examines the perceptions of workers in the nonprofit sector and how these differ from workers in other sectors. Workers in the nonprofit sector have lower job satisfaction than workers in either the public or private sectors. Nonprofit sector jobs are also quite precarious, with high rates of temporary and part-time employment, including many workers who are involuntarily part-time.

The findings are drawn from four waves of the Survey on Employment and Skills. The report was written by Steven Ayer.

Key findings include:

• Low job satisfaction in the nonprofit sector driven by some of the largest employee groups.

• Precarious and part-time work is common, as is economic precarity.

• The nonprofit sector is diverse, and workers are more likely to report having ever faced discrimination and unfair treatment at work.

• Work from home is the new normal and preferred by most of those working from home.

• Collaboration is a critical skill for the future in the nonprofit sector.

Read the report

For more information, contact Steven Ayer or the Environics Institute.

The study is based on the Survey on Employment and Skills, conducted by the Environics Institute for Survey Research, in partnership with the Future Skills Centre and the Diversity Institute at Toronto Metropolitan University. The survey offers a unique opportunity to explore the employment situation of nonprofit sector workers, with a random, representative sample of 639 nonprofit workers amid a broader representation sample of 12,285 workers from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, collected across four survey waves between February 2020 and April 2022. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first representative data source that compares topics like job satisfaction and income sufficiency within the nonprofit sector compared to the broader workforce. In addition, it provides unique contributions to topics like job precarity, part-time employment, and skills and training in the nonprofit sector.

The Survey on Employment and Skills is funded primarily by the Government of Canada’s Future Skills Centre / Le sondage sur l’emploi et les compétences est financé principalement par le Centre des Compétences futures du gouvernement du Canada.