Future of work
A curated resource of recent research on trends shaping Canada's labour market.
Using the 2021 Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB), this report outlines how the first year of the pandemic slowed the socioeconomic progress that immigrants had made over the past decade.
From 2016–2021, immigration contributed to 80% of the country’s labour force growth. Prior to the onset of COVID-19, the gap was narrowing between recent immigrants (those living in Canada 10 years or less) and the Canadian-born population in terms of both employment rate and earnings.
However, due to the pandemic, new immigrants, especially women, were disproportionately affected. In 2020, the median entry wage of immigrants admitted in 2019 was $30,000, which was 6.5% lower than for those admitted in 2018 ($32,100).
Immigrant women experienced significant challenges, with their median wages falling by 11.1% between 2019–2020 to $23,200. In comparison, their male counterparts saw a decline of only 5.2%.
Interestingly, between 2019–2020, immigrants who knew both English and French were the only group to see an increase in media entry wages (up 0.3%).
Finally, an interesting trend revealed that prior experience before permanent residency had a positive affect on the median wage. Those with a work permit saw the lowest decrease in median entry wages. Those without pre-admission experience saw the biggest decline, perhaps due to a lack of academic or work experience in Canada.