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Employment among “core working age” immigrants increased in 2007 despite a growing disparity between employment rates for immigrant and Canadian-born workers, a report by Statistics Canada said Tuesday.
The number of employed immigrants between the age of 25 and 54 grew by 52,000 – 2.1 per cent – while their Canadian-born counterparts saw only 1.3-per-cent growth.
Although immigrants had a higher growth rate than their Canadian counterparts, the employment gap between the two groups widened because the immigrants' population increased much faster than their employment while the Canadian-born population increased more slowly.
Nearly 2.5 million immigrants were employed in Canada in 2007, 90 per cent of them with full-time time work.
Quebec saw the greatest growth in working-age immigrants – an overall increase of 28,000 workers. Both immigrants and Canadian-born workers found the majority of their growth in service jobs.
Among immigrants, women were responsible for most of the growth in actual jobs but continue to have higher overall rates of unemployment than immigrant men.
The greatest growth for immigrants in 2007 was experienced among those who had been in Canada more than 10 years; recent immigrants saw comparatively small gains and remained unemployed at almost twice the rate of Canadian-born workers.
The largest growth among immigrant workers was in those with a university degree, in contrast, Canadian-born workers with a postsecondary certificate or diploma saw the largest employment gain in 2007.
Dr. Charles Beach of Queen's University, an expert in economics of Canadian immigration policy is ambivalent about the report.
“On the upside, we have been admitting large numbers of university-educated immigrants into the country and there is growth in the economy,” Dr. Beach said, “On the downside, there is a discrepancy in the rates of representation among immigrant groups.”
Almost all of the employment growth among working-age immigrants in 2007 was attributable to individuals from Asia (and the Middle East), with Filipino workers representing the greatest employment gain.
African-born immigrants saw modest employment gains and a decrease in their unemployment rates but still had lower employment rates, and higher unemployment rates than Canadian-born workers and immigrant workers born in other regions.
Dr. Beach also noted that most recent immigrants are going heading to Ontario, where the economy has been sluggish while they might fare better in Alberta's robust job market.
“There is a regional mismatch; more than half of recent immigrants move to the GTA (greater Toronto area), but the most growth is in Alberta, and they get relatively few immigrants.”
Dr. Beach added that the popularity of the service industry could also be a barrier, as language proficiency is more important there than in agriculture, where immigrants traditionally found first employment.
“A traditional route was coming into agriculture, now the real growth is in services,” Dr. Beach said, “and service sector jobs require a better grasp of the native language.”
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