If you think getting a higher education and joining a profession will help you avoid precarious work, you may be in for a rude awakening.

A new study from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) has found that more than a fifth of Canada's professionals — 22 per cent — are in precarious work of some sort, including part-time work, contract work or freelance work, and women are disproportionately affected.

"They are among Canada's working elite, yet many professionals are experiencing job instability and economic insecurity," stated the report released Tuesday.

It found that precarious work "cuts across all employment sectors, professional occupations, wage levels, ages, and career stages."

The study combined a survey of 1,000 professionals across Canada with four focus groups of professionals in Toronto and Winnipeg, carried out by Environics Research.

"We found a pervasive sense of economic insecurity and a pessimistic outlook on the job market," the report found.

Even landing a full-time gig might not be enough to avoid precarious work; 26 per cent of precarious workers reported having a full-time job. Typically, these jobs lack security (the worker is uncertain they will have a job a year from now) and lack benefits such as sick days or pensions.

Education alone won't shield you from the problem. The survey found that precarious professionals are actually likelier to have a post-graduate degree (30 per cent) than non-precarious professionals (23 per cent).

"We are talking about people here who quote-unquote 'did everything right,'" said Ricardo Tranjan, a senior researcher at the CCPA and co-author of the report.

"They went to university, they passed professional exams, they were told they would have a job waiting for them. And it's not necessarily there. ... It is a sort of broken promise in our social contract."

In an interview with HuffPost Canada, Tranjan expressed concerns the breaking of that promise could lead to broader social disengagement.

"How are (precarious professionals) feeling about other social commitments? Are they interested in elections, in participating in the local community?" he asked.

Labour market 'tilted against women'

The survey found professional women are far likelier than their male counterparts to be in precarious work, with women accounting for 60 per cent of all precarious professionals.

Tranjan said this has little to do with women gravitating towards less-secure jobs, and is more "a reflection of the condition of women in the labour market.

"Unfortunately it seems the labour market is asymmetrically tilted against women. Other research shows women earn less and have less opportunities for career advancement."

Precarious government jobs

The problem is not limited to private-sector jobs; in fact, two of the three sectors with the highest rates of precarious work are in the public sector — health care, where nearly one in five jobs are precarious, and education, where nearly three in 10 jobs are precarious.

Tranjan said the tendency for colleges and universities to hire contract teachers in recent years "likely" has something to do with that.