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Immigrants underemployed

November 30, 2009
By Angela Easby

A recent study from Statistics Canada found two-thirds of university-educated immigrants are underemployed, based on numbers from the 2008 labour market study.

The report looked at the differences between university-educated immigrants and their Canadian counterparts, as well as how these differences changed according to the length of time they spent in Canada.

According to the report, 1.1 million workers between the ages of 25 and 54 who have a university degree were underemployed, and immigrants were 1.5 times more likely to be underemployed than Canadian-born workers. In addition, 16 per cent of immigrants who arrived in Canada in the last five years held temporary jobs — which is double that of people born in Canada.

However, according to some, these statistics may be misleading.

“There’s lots of underemployment going on right now […] among young Canadian-born people entering the workforce as well as immigrants,” Roderic Beaujot, a sociology professor at Western, noted. “It’s a time of adaptation too [...] it might take people a little while to get settled in to the right job.”

This period of adjustment may partially account for the high level of underemployment as the report also noted for immigrants who have been in Canada for more than 10 years, employment statistics were similar to that of Canadian-born workers.

The ability of university-educated immigrants to find a suitable job also depends on the demands of their field.

“For immigrants entering a regulated field, such as Ontario health care, where and from who they obtained their medical degree is very important,” Catherine Clarke, media relations officer for the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, said.

Clarke noted standards had to be maintained to ensure quality of patient care, but new regulatory policies have made it possible for qualified immigrants to practice in Ontario.

“Applicants are evaluated on an individual basis, and we take a lot of factors into consideration. Assessments of medical competency can actually be done at Western, which is one of six medical faculties in Ontario able to do these assessments,” Clarke said. “We’ve had a lot of success with this policy, and last year 43.4 per cent of our licensed grads were international.”

Other bridging programs also exist to help immigrants enter the regulated workforce. Fanshawe College runs three separate bridging programs in accounting, finance and insurance.

“We just started the program in August 2009, but there has been an incredible response from the community,” Mary Pierce, chair of business and management at the Lawrence Kinlin School of Business at Fanshawe, said. “There’s been a very high demand for positions, especially in accounting.”

Despite such bridging efforts, the report stated immigrants still earned $2.28 less per week than Canadian-born workers and the proportion of immigrants earning less than $10 an hour is 1.8 times higher.

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