Study shows highly educated Canadian immigrants have problems finding work

Published:  18 Mar at 6 PM
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A recent study has revealed that new arrivals in Canada with university degrees have less chance of finding suitable jobs than in 1995.

The survey, conducted by researchers at the University of Toronto, analysed the success of immigrant university graduates in finding suitable employment during a ten-year period.
Researchers used data from the 1996, 2001 and 2006 censuses and found a far lower success rate in 2006 tha in 2001, with the situation continuing to deteriorate to the present day.

Recent immigrants, they state, are far more likely to have achieved qualifications at degree level as well as experience, and far fewer are able to find managerial or executive-level positions in their new country. In 2006, only 43 per cent of newly-arrived, qualified immigrant men were able to find suitable employment, compared with 50 per cent in 1996.

Qualified and experienced women immigrants had a harder time still as, both in 1996 and 2006, only 34 per cent were able to find employment. During the same period, female Canadian nationals with similar qualifications fared much better, with 65 per cent able to get suitable work.

The survey also found that a good number of qualified, university-educated immigrants had been reduced to taking unskilled or manual jobs in order to survive. The underutilisation of skills which resulted has, according to researchers, cost the overall economy some CA£11.37 billion.

Although various incentives have been tried in order to reduce underutilisation of skills and help new arrivals adjust to different work environments, none have been especially successful. It would seem that the barriers to immigrant skill utilisation are still holding firm across much of Canada.
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