Faster employment growth for new immigrants
According to Statistics Canada’s economic and social report, after years of inequality, new immigrants to Canada are now seeing faster employment rate growth than their Canadian-born counterparts.
In addition to job growth, new immigrants (aged 25-54) in Canada are closing the employment gap with their Canadian counterparts and contributing disproportionately to Canadian innovation and company ownership.
Continued improvement in the employment market results for immigrants in Canada.
Since the early 2010s, immigrants in Canada have witnessed considerable improvement in their employment market performance.
Between 2010 and 2023, the employment rate for recent immigrants aged 25 to 54 years old increased by 10.7%. During the same year, the employment growth rate for Canadian-born workers was 4.1%.
As a result, the employment rate difference between both groups has narrowed significantly during the previous decade. In 2010, the employment rate difference between recent immigrants and Canadian-born citizens was 13.1%. In 2023, this disparity was just 6.5%, showing that newcomers as a whole are on course to outperform their Canadian-born colleagues in terms of finding and obtaining work in Canada.
Furthermore, when comparing the two groups, discrepancies in unemployment rates have narrowed. Unemployment rates for recent immigrants in the examined age range fell from 12.1% in 2010 to 6.6% in 2023, narrowing the gap between recent immigrants and Canadian-born workers to only 2.6%.
Immigrants also recovered quicker during the COVID-19 epidemic, when they incurred large job losses as a group, particularly among those engaged in the lodging, food services, and retail trade sectors. However, when the employment rate difference between Canadian-born workers and recent immigrants was compared, it was smaller than it was before the pandemic in 2019, showing that job growth among recent immigrants was particularly high between 2020 and 2023.
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Growing immigrant participation in patents and investments
According to another research mentioned in the economic and social report, immigrants were over-represented among patent filers in Canada, accounting for more than one-third of all patents but constituting just one-fourth of the Canadian population.
Furthermore, the survey found that immigrant engagement among investors in Canada has grown, demonstrating yet another manner in which newcomers are contributing to Canadian industry and innovation. In 2019, immigrant males accounted for 34.2% of Canadian investors, while immigrant women accounted for 44.3%. Again, given that immigrants account for around 25% of the Canadian population, it is apparent that this group contributes disproportionately to the national profile of innovation and enterprise in the country.
The study identifies a few significant changes in Canada’s immigration environment that may explain why immigrants in the country continue to thrive.
The first is an increase in immigration applicants with previous work permits in Canada. According to the data, 36% of all new immigrants granted permanent residency in Canada in 2022 had a work permit prior to their entry. This tendency has progressively increased, with 19% of immigrants possessing work permits prior to immigration in 2010, and 33% in 2019. There is a large body of evidence indicating that persons having prior work experience in Canada (particularly in higher-skilled positions) have better immigration prospects than those who have not.
The second reason is the implementation of the Express Entry management system, which employs the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) to evaluate candidates and choose new economic immigrants. The CRS heavily favours Canadian work experience (meaning that those with this benefit will receive higher scores and are thus more likely to be chosen for immigration), but it also considers other human capital factors that have been shown to correlate with better labour market outcomes in Canada, such as official language proficiency and education (which is rigorously assessed (if not in Canada, through education credential assessments). The use of this approach has greatly aided Canada in selecting economic immigrants who are more likely to succeed in the employment market.
