This question has a straight answer and an honest one, and they are different. The straight answer is a ranked list of professions, which is what most articles on this topic provide. The honest answer is that no government publishes such a ranking for international graduates, which means every list of that kind rests on assumptions its author chose and rarely explains.

What governments do publish is narrower and more reliable. This article sets out what those figures are, what they actually measure, and how to use them without misleading yourself.

Why There Is No Official Ranking

Pay varies by occupation, by region within a country, by employer, by seniority and by year. A national statistics agency can tell you what people in an occupation earned last year. It cannot tell you what you will earn, and it does not publish a league table of careers for people who have not yet arrived.

There is a second problem specific to international students. The figures that circulate most widely are graduate salary surveys and recruitment-site averages, which are self-selected samples rather than official statistics. They are not worthless, but they are not what a government measured, and the difference matters when a family is deciding whether to take a loan.

What Canada Publishes: Wages by Occupation

Canada is the most transparent of the major destinations. Job Bank, run by Employment and Social Development Canada, publishes low, median and high wage estimates for each occupation, at national, provincial and regional level, updated annually.

The methodology is stated openly and is worth understanding, because it changes how you read the numbers:

• The primary data source is Statistics Canada's Labour Force Survey, described by Job Bank as the most inclusive and timely source of wage data by occupational group.
• The median is preferred over the average because it is less sensitive to extreme values and better represents typical wages in an occupation.
• The high wage usually corresponds to the 90th percentile. If the high wage for an occupation is shown as CAD 40.00 an hour, that means 90 per cent of workers in it earn CAD 40.00 an hour or less.
• Wages are before tax and other deductions and do not include non-wage benefits, which are published separately.

That last point about the 90th percentile is where most misreading happens. A headline figure quoted from the high end of a range describes the top tenth of an occupation, usually people with years of experience. It is not a graduate starting salary.

What Other Countries Publish: Salary Floors

Elsewhere the published figures are thresholds rather than observed earnings. They tell you the minimum an employer must pay to sponsor a skilled visa, which is a floor, not a typical wage.

As published by the respective government portals and checked on 27 July 2026. Thresholds are revised regularly. Rupee equivalents are not given here because they depend on the exchange rate on the day you convert; use the ROI calculator on the relevant country page instead.

Reading a threshold as a salary expectation is a common and expensive error. A UK minimum salary for an occupation tells you what an employer cannot go below. It says nothing about what the market pays a graduate with no local experience, which may be at or barely above that floor.

Gross Salary Is Not the Number That Matters

The comparison that actually informs a decision is not salary against salary. It is what remains each month after tax and living costs, set against the total cost of getting there. That calculation uses your numbers, not a national average.

How to Research Pay in Your Own Field

1. Identify your occupation's official classification code, since wage tools are organised by code rather than job title.
2. Look up the median, not the high. For Canada, use Job Bank at regional level rather than national, because the spread between provinces is large.
3. Find the entry point of the range, which is where a recent graduate realistically starts, rather than the top of it.
4. Check the salary threshold that applies to that occupation for the visa you would need, and treat it as the floor.
5. Subtract tax and rent for the specific city, then compare what is left across your shortlisted options.
6. Run the same exercise for India, so you know what the qualification is worth if you return.

A Note on Choosing a Career by Salary

Pay is a legitimate factor, particularly when a family is borrowing to fund the degree. It is a poor sole criterion, for two reasons worth stating plainly.

The first is that high-paying fields attract the most applicants, so entry is competitive and the advertised figures usually describe people already established in the role. The second is that the fields that pay well shift over a career, while a qualification you chose only for its salary can be difficult to move away from.

A more durable approach is to shortlist fields you can do well and would continue with, then use the published wage data to compare the realistic options within that shortlist. That way the salary research informs the decision rather than making it.

Explore fields under programs, compare destinations and run the numbers on the country comparison, and follow changes to thresholds on Maha Study Abroad news. What this portal does and does not undertake is set out in its Honesty Promise.