It gives us all something to do during boring work meetings 
I don’t claim to be an expert on Canadian tax reporting, but if foreign residents aren’t reporting taxes, then they would not be included in the survey. The portion of Canadian residents residing elsewhere no doubt varies by university, in addition to degree. A study that looks at migration by major among 3 of the universities with the highest portion of students working in US is at https://brocku.ca/social-sciences/political-science/wp-content/uploads/sites/153/Reversing-the-Brain-Drain.pdf .
CS/CE were at a high 30% in US at these 3 selected universities with especially large portion working in US. CS/CEng are likely also among the fields withe largest difference in typical earnings in Canada and US. A CS major working as a software engineering likely has a higher typical salary range in US than Canada. EEng was a notably lower 14% residing in US, and MEng was 8% in US. In contrast fields with less positive prospects in US had lower, such as 0% in biology. If you only counted persons without grad degrees like the salary survey, I’m sure the totals would be lower.
Counting Canadian CS majors who work in US would probably significantly increase median earnings. Whether it is correct to do so, depends on what your goals of the review are. For example, if you are comparing typical earnings for CS majors working US vs working Canada, it may be more appropriate to keep those separate.
The same can be said of the following, from the point of view of high school seniors aspiring for careers:
- Physicians.
- Tenured college and university faculty.
- Professional athletes.
This does not necessarily mean that such aspirants will not be successful career-wise. But most (successful or not) will be in some other career than the above.
Or maybe our kids will take 37 years to complete a PhD… like Brian May
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1 clue. I’m in the 40%+ category.
Great paper, and I like they honed in on what I thought was the top 3 for STEM brain drain too.
EE is lumped in with Chem eng and bio and physics which makes no sense, btw. It’s E and CE at most Cdn schools with a common year 1-3 core and all 4th year courses open to E and CE students.
So, data!
Typical salaries at year 1 are often well correlated with major and career field. Typical salaries of MBAs often have more to do with past work experience .
There are plenty of information about long term salaries available, including with advanced degrees. For example, the list below shows median earnings for non-transfer UCLA grads who reside in CA, 15 years after graduation, with no control for post graduate degrees. So students with MBAs are included as well as advanced engineering degrees. They do not count persons who are self employed, and exclude various other mostly smaller groups associated with lower earnings.
This list has some key differences. For example, UCLA biology majors are among the highest median earnings at 15 years, when you count the MDs and to a lesser extent other grad degrees. Philosophy and history also get a big boost from professional/grad degrees. How meaningful this type of list is, is debatable. In general, the further you look after graduation, the greater the influence of additional relevant variables, particularly experience and professional degrees in other fields, such as MD and Law.
Median Earnings of UCLA grads – 15 years out, Including Grad Degrees
CS – $174k
Business – $169k
Engineering – $151k
Biology – $138k
Economics – $132k
Mathematics – $123k
Philosophy – $107k
Psychology – $101k
History – $99k
English – $93k
Foreign Language – $81k
Arts – $69k
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Is that total compensation?
I believe the totals above are from tax reported earnings.
Biology makes a comeback! 
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Agree with this for all fields. Thought the mean is likely vastly different. The mean for engineers is likely higher than elsewhere and the low end is probably still a decent living and the high end a better living (but not millions). While the mean for art might be much lower with higher tails on both sides. You can make near zero in art or millions and the middle might be somewhat less than engineering. Outliers tend to be the one we think about.
Some fields are like that ( professional athletes is another example) with some earning extraordinary incomes and many in minor leagues barely being able to pay rent and having to play in European leagues to make ends meet.
I haven’t met many engineers who are in the top income earners. But people see that they make a nice and strong income. Some may work for Google/others and make a very high income ( but that’s not the norm). That is not true in all STEM fields. Someone with a strong STEM degree who is also a CEO/builder/maker has a much higher income on average than an engineer.
But some parents seem to want more of a guaranteed moderate income than something that is on the extreme tail end. Hence the comfort with STEM and the discomfort with many other subjects. The thing is, there is no guarantee for any salary and the lower the risk, the lower the reward.
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Should this thread be more narrowly focused?
As in, do you encourage your “middlingly” talented kid who has no strong interests or talents to pursue more stable income paths?
Someone who is “middlingly talented” (i.e. not elite in anything) may not be a good fit for an elite-or-bust career path.
Well, this being CC, probably not too many middlingly talented kids here, lol. But some of us do have kids who are mere mortals!
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When I think of “middling” talent all I have to do is think of school concerts esp. for the more difficult instruments. Wow. Hard to sit there for an hour. But some of them might have gone further past the squeaks and off key notes.
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Often it is a question of spreading too thin. The 10000 hour rule broadly applies. Kids that put in some large number of hours (in the instrument of your choice) end up being good. Once they are good, there is a greater chance that they’ll like what they are good at. This ensures that they spend the next 100 hours on the instrument (or academic subject) with greater passion. They learn faster and better. Rinse and repeat.
So an excessive amount of experimentation through life is detrimental. This is not much different than wanting to date a hundred people before committing to a life partner rather than a small single digit number.
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Relative to typical high school level achievements, of course. However, being at the top of one’s high school does not mean that one is likely to get into medical school (or other highly competitive path) down the road.
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I think it might be more accurately phrased as, do you encourage your child to pursue an oversubscribed field ( which could be in the arts, or education, as in the 1960s, or even law). There is far more supply than demand for some types of work ( almost all phd candidates). Yes, they may be able to find employment other than directly connected to the academic study of their field, but the odds of finding tenure track positions are very small. So even if that is your passion, and your talent, and what you most enjoy doing, it may not make sense to pursue
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Not to nitpick semantics, but I see a difference between encouraging and forcibly discouraging a particular pursuit. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle, and will vary from family to family.
There are definitely those paths that fall into the category of “don’t try this unless you can’t see yourself doing anything else”. Then the person has to weigh whether it’s better to pivot right now vs how much they may regret it for the rest of their life if they didn’t try.
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Well, the OP asked about suggesting some fields to one’s child, so I would expect the opposite to be discouraging some fields. I dont think anyone is discussing “forcible” anything-the “kids” are all adults and cant be forced into anything. They may get more or less financial support from parents for some options, but the student always has free will to choose another path.
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I knew I’d regret nitpicking semantics, lol. 
I think I had in mind the few young people I’ve encountered who were being forced in a particular direction by their parents, but that’s not really germane to the OP’s question.