In a special weekend report on the two sides of Canada's economic recovery, Tavia Grant and Jennifer Yang chronicled the plight of immigrants in the work force .
While an astonishing 60,000 more women age 55 and over successfully entered the labour force , immigrants are losing their jobs at more than three times the rate of Canadian-born workers.
The story found that, for Canadian-born workers, employment fell 1.6 per cent over the past year. By comparison, immigrants who have been in the country five years or less saw a decline of 5.7 per cent. The story also said that immigrants will spend more time looking for a new job.
Tavia Grant and Elizabeth McIsaac, executive director of the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council, took reader questions on the topic on Tuesday at noon.
Thank you to everyone who submitted questions and posted comments.
TRIEC creates and champions solutions to help integrate skilled immigrants into the Greater Toronto Region labour market. Ms. McIsaac has worked with the council since it was launched in 2003. On the issue of immigrant labour market integration, Ms. McIsaac has most recently co-authored Making the Connections: Ottawa's Role in Immigrant Employment and Integrating Immigrants in Canada: Addressing Skills Diversity.
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Claire Neary, Reportonbusiness.com: Hi, Elizabeth. Thanks so much for joining us today. Globe and Mail workplace reporter Tavia Grant, who wrote about immigrants’ experiences with Jennifer Yang for our Saturday paper, is also joining us.
Their story sparked a lot of debate and reader questions. Elizabeth, did you have any initial thoughts on this topic or on Statistics Canada’s findings that unemployment in Canada has risen much higher among immigrants who have been in the country five years or less?
Elizabeth McIsaac, executive director of the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council: First, thank you for the opportunity to participate in this online discussion about an issue that I believe continues to be of critical importance to the future productivity and prosperity of Canada and its cities.
I think that Tavia and Jennifer did an excellent job of bringing to light the complexity of this issue. The numbers from Statistics Canada confirm what we had been hearing anecdotally and knew intuitively, that immigrants are being disproportionately affected by the recession. Of course this is not surprising, as this played out similarly in previous recessions.
What is of growing concern for Canada, and in particular Canadian cities, is that today immigrants constitute a core element of the general population and by extension the labour force – almost 50 per cent of residents in the Toronto Region were born outside of Canada. What happens to them in a recession and a much anticipated recovery will have significant bearing on our overall productivity and prosperity. The skills and experience that immigrants bring to our economy offer promise for our competitiveness going forward. But if these very skills and experience are not effectively utilized in our labour market, our region will not reap the benefits that immigration can bring.
Claire Neary, Reportonbusiness.com: Thanks, Elizabeth. Tavia, did you have any initial thoughts?
Tavia Grant, workplace reporter: Hi Claire. Thanks for hosting this discussion. A few thoughts on reporting this story -- the trend was something many people theorized was happening, partly because we know it happened in previous recessions, and partly because, if you go to any job fair or jobless networking group these days, it's quite apparent. But without Statscan's help in crunching the numbers, we wouldn't have had much of a story. So a thank you to them.
One element we didn't include -- we got the data after the story was filed -- is that immigrant men are particularly hard hit. This is likely due to the fact that many newcomers are working in industries -- manufacturing and construction -- that tend to have employ men. The broader idea of the "he-cession" or men losing their jobs faster in this recession than women, is something the Globe has reported on before.
The part of the story I found fascinating is what we've learned from past recessions: that newcomers who land in Canada during a downturn often never get back on track, and that for the broader immigrant population, re-entering the labour market even when the economy recovers poses extra challenges. Underemployment is a problem that will linger for years, and that has a host of ramifications -- from more newcomers sliding into low-income status, to the fact that our economy is losing out what's supposed to be a key source of labour in the coming years.
