Court Employees Are Fastest Aging Group Among Justice Personnel

According to a recently released Statistics Canada report entitled Aging of Justice Personnel, court employees are the most rapidly aging group among all justice system personnel in Canada.

The report, published in the March 2009 issue of Juristat, also reveals that court personnel are aging more rapidly than the Canadian labour force as a whole.

Most of the data is from the 1991, 1996, 2001 and 2006 Censuses of population. There is some complementary data from other sources as well.

Court employees include legal secretaries, court recorders and medical transcriptionists, court officers and justices of the peace, court clerks, judges, lawyers and Quebec notaries, paralegal and related occupations, and sheriffs and bailiffs.

"Overall, the median age (43 years) of court workers is higher than that of Canadian workers as a whole (41 years). In the court workers' group, only 1 person in 20 is under the age of 25, while in the Canadian labour force, 1 worker in 6 is in the same age group ... Workers in all other age groups account for a higher proportion among courts workers than among Canadian workers as a whole. This is possibly due to the fact that most of the tasks performed by court workers require a level of expertise that is only rarely achieved by young workers (...)"

"The median age for all court personnel rose from 36 years in 1991 to 43 years in 2006. This seven-year increase is greater than that for Canadian workers as a whole, whose median age climbed from 36 years to 41 years. This rapid increase in median age stems from the fact that the number of court personnel under 30 years of age fell 29% between 1991 and 2006, a marked decline compared to that of all Canadian workers under age 30 (-8%). In contrast, the number of justice workers in their fifties tripled during the same period, while for the Canadian labour force in general, this number did not quite double ..."

The report looks at the overall growth in the numbers of employees in the justice system as well as the specific demographic trends among police officers, private security officers, and correctional officers.