TORONTO — Despite being better educated, new immigrants to Canada are earning less compared to Canadian-born workers than they did a quarter-century ago, in part because they can't get their credentials recognized here.
Census data released Thursday suggest new immigrants find it harder to get jobs in their professional fields, and even when they do, those jobs can be precarious.
The Statistics Canada report shows that while a recent immigrant, man or woman, made 85 cents for every dollar made by a similar Canadian-born worker in 1980, men who have recently moved to Canada are now making 63 cents to the dollar. Recent immigrant women made only 56 cents to every dollar in 2005.
There are a number of reasons for the decline in immigrants' relative earnings, but the most important, according to the Statscan, is the increasing importance of post-secondary education.
As a result, new immigrants can be found working in low-skilled jobs almost three times more often than Canadian-born graduates, even though immigrants are more likely to have university degrees than 25 years ago.
According to the census report, those immigrants who finish their education in Canada made 25 per cent more than those who had finished their education overseas.
The earnings gap between recent immigrants and Canadian-born is actually larger among those with post-secondary education – so large that recent immigrants with a degree earn less than Canadian-born citizens without one.
Another reason for the decline in earnings is that those immigrants who did find work in their field were primarily in the technology sector, which stumbled after the dot-com bust after 2001.
Language can also be a factor, given that recent immigrants are less likely to speak English or French. However, even when language is taken in to account earnings are lower for the most recent arrivals, Statscan reported.
The trend started in 1980, when immigrants began to see their earnings level drop even though their educational levels “grew remarkably” compared to those of Canadian-born workers, Statscan said.
“The group of people that were hit the most were the older recent immigrants,” said Mr. Morissette.
“This amount of experience in your (home) country is no longer rewarded the way it used to be, if it has any rewards at all.”
