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Week 2: Insights into Supporting Immigrants
Editorial by Christian Saint Cyr
National Director / Canadian Job Development Network
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Canada is at a crossroads in supporting, utilizing and integrating immigrants in our labour market. Contrary to popular belief, if we look at the employment outcomes of immigrants over several decades we see genuine improvement. The gap in the unemployment rate between recent immigrants and Canadian-born workers narrowed from 5.7 percentage points in 2010 to 2.6 percentage points in 2023.
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As Canada becomes more diverse and the skills shortage becomes more pronounced, both government and employers are recognizing the value newcomers bring to the labour market. Population growth in Canada has slowed since the late 1960s and without immigrants, Canada’s population would likely be declining already, if it weren’t for increased life expectancy.
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Most provincial government estimates suggest that over the next decade, 25 to 30 percent of our future workforce will need to come from international migrants into Canada.
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In responding to the need to better integrate immigrants into the Canadian labour market, the federal government has supported provinces in targeting immigrants for high-demand occupations. Through the provincial nominee program’s (PNP) Express Entry and Non-Express Entry processes; the provinces are able to target specific occupations such as highly educated occupations including data scientists; electrical and electronics engineering technologists and technicians; and specialists in clinical and laboratory medicine to trade occupations such as carpenters, crane operators and floor covering installers.
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Meanwhile, the Provinces have worked much harder to fund credential recognition or completion while simultaneously addressing systemic challenges that have prevented employment outcomes for recent immigrants.
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These changes are by no means perfect. It is still costly and time consuming for many immigrants to come to Canada. In countless cases, pathways are still bared for a large number of highly skilled immigrants.
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While our coordinated immigration strategy is far from perfect, if you are going to better target immigrants who have the skills to fill in-demand jobs and provide supports to get their credentials recognized in Canada, of course we’re going to see employment outcomes improve across for newcomers. This is particularly true when the unemployment rate has hovered at record low levels for the past decade.
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Among recent immigrant workers holding a bachelor’s degree or higher, the proportion of those working in low-skilled occupations decreased from 31.1% in 2016 to 26.7% in 2021, while the proportion working in high-skilled occupations rose from 40.0% to 44.4%.
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But that picture is only a partial picture of the experiences of immigrants in our country, albeit one that the federal and provincial governments want to promote much of the time.
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From 2010 to 2019, Canada admitted an average of 276,000 new immigrants annually, adding a minimum of 148,000 people to the labour supply each year.
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When the federal government announced their latest plan for immigration increases from 465,000 in 2023 to 500,000 in 2025, this is an increase of about 80% compared with the average level in the 2010s.
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We've also become much more reliant on temporary workers. According to Statistics Canada, there were 111,000 temporary foreign workers (TFWs) in Canada in the year 2000. By 2021, this number had ballooned to 777,000.
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There were also 239,131 international students in 2011. In its 2014 plan, the federal government said it aimed to more than double that number by the end of the decade, as well as increase the number of students who would become permanent residents after graduation.
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According to data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), that goal was smashed in just four years, with 721,205 international students in Canada in 2018 and by most estimates this number had exceeded a million in the last year.
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Global conflict has also accelerated the number of refugees and asylum seekers coming into Canada and many eventually seeking opportunities to work in the labour market. More than 210,000 Ukrainians have come to Canada since 2022; as well as more than 45,000 Syrian refugees and 40,000 refugees from Afghanistan.
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As you can see, while immigration represents a critical component of our future labour market, having significant increases in all of these areas has dramatically increased the number of newcomers in Canada, which has increased housing costs; contributed to inflation; challenged the education and health care systems; and swamped settlement and language programs.
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Government has responded in the last year in an almost knee-jerk fashion, by restoring the 20-hour per week restriction on the number of hours international students can work; reducing the number of international students by 35 percent; and introducing for the first time a cap on the number of temporary foreign workers employers can bring in. And while these changes are likely to alleviate some challenges they are likely to create new ones such as a businesses that have become reliant on temporary foreign workers going out of business and colleges and universities needing to scale back their programs and staffing, producing less specialized training pathways.
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While immigrants who’ve been targeted based on their skills and education and those who’ve graduated from high-demand training programs in Canadian colleges and universities are likely to flourish in Canada’s labour market, we’re seeing increasing challenges for recent immigrants who lack English- or French-language skills; those who lack transportation and basic housing options; an inability to afford to live in the majority of Canadian communities; and for many a basic lack of skills that will take them beyond entry-level employment.
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As the A.I. revolution continues to take hold, workers in these roles will continue to face greater competition for the increasingly smaller number of available jobs.
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For recent immigrants to Canada, there needs to be a long-term strategy and a short-term strategy. In the long-term, the acquisition of strong language capacity is critical. The skills that are critical to the jobs that will remain in our economy are rooted in language based communication including collaboration, empathy, persuasion, team work, motivation and story development.
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In the long-term, immigrants will also need to develop strong skills that are in demand in the labour market and will typically require specialized training. This may include a 2-, 3- or 4-year degree, but could also include stackable micro-credentials and apprenticeship.
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In the decade to come, it will be increasingly and exponentially harder for people to obtain entry-level employment with minimal skills and education. The best path forward for both immigrants and born Canadians is skills and language development.
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In the short term, I would encourage employers and immigrant job seekers to invest in time and training in the Canadian ‘Skills for Success’, specifically Adaptability; Collaboration; Communication; Creativity and Innovation; Digital; Numeracy; Problem Solving; Reading and Writing. As we transition from the old Essential Skills, there is new training and funding to encourage employment in the development of these skills.
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Skills for Success allows workers and employers to measure the skills required in specific jobs and help people develop these skills. Often the skills development is workplace based and can be incorporated into an employers training plan.
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As you speak with employers, I would encourage you to frame the hiring of immigrant employees as an investment, similar to one an employer might make with an apprentice. By integrated Skills for Success into their employment plan, an employer can create a multi-year plan for an employee where they might have workers cycling through every three to six months at this point.
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We’ll be discussing the contribution immigrants can make at our #MotivatingMondays meeting of the Canadian Job Development Network, Monday July 8th at 8:30am Pacific; 9:30am Mountain; 10:30am Central; 11:30am Eastern; 12:30pm Atlantic and at 1pm in Newfoundland.
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We're no longer using the Motivating Mondays URL to connect due to security concerns. Instead we're hosting the sessions on a new Teams Link we share in this newsletter each week. On the morning of Monday July 8th, 'Click this Link' to join the session LIVE.
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