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According to 2023 Statistics Canada (StatsCan) data released yesterday, there is a clear correlation between the employment rate of core working-age immigrants* and how long it has been since they landed in Canada.
Importantly, StatsCan’s data assessed employment and unemployment for two general groups of immigrants – those aged “15 years or older” and those who are “25 to 54 years old” (defined by StatsCan as being of core working-age).
However, this article will focus on core working-age Canadian immigrants, as they represent a larger proportion of annual immigrants to Canada and are a greater area of focus for the Canadian immigration system.
Employment Rate Among Core Working-Age Immigrants
In 2023, core working-age immigrants across Canada experienced an increase in their employment rate corresponding with the number of years since landing in Canada.
In other words, among 25-to-54-year-old immigrants, the employment rate for 2023 was highest for those who landed in Canada “more than 10 years earlier” and lowest for immigrants who landed in “five or less years earlier.”
Specifically, StatsCan data displayed the following figures for employment rates among core working-age immigrants in 2023.
- Immigrants who landed 5 or fewer years earlier: 77.8%
- Immigrants who landed between 5 to 10 years earlier: 81.9%
- Immigrants who landed over 10 years earlier: 84.5%
Notably, the overall employment rate among landed immigrants in 2023 was 82.6%, nearly four percent lower than the employment rate of Canadian-born members of the core working-age population (86.3%).
Also worth noting is that the 2023 employment rate figures are the highest they have been since 2019 for two of the three immigrant sub-groups.
More specifically, since reaching 81% in 2019, the employment rate for immigrants in Canada between 5-10 years dropped to 74.4% in 2020. Since then, this figure has slowly risen to where it stands for 2023. In addition, immigrants in Canada for at least 10 years saw their employment rate reach 83.2% before dropping to 77.9% in 2020. This number also steadily increased in the last three years until now.