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This paper asks to what extent parents' education and income are associated with the educational attainment of childhood immigrants who arrived in Canada at age 17 or younger. Childhood immigrants aged 25 to 44 in the 2016 Census were linked to the Longitudinal Immigration Database to determine their parents' education level and income. The results show that both fathers' and mothers' education had a substantial and positive effect on the likelihood of childhood immigrants completing a bachelor's degree or higher. If both parents had a bachelor's degree or higher, the effect was almost doubled, controlling for other background variables. There was some variation by source region. The effect of parents' education was weaker for families from East Asia and Southeast Asia than for those from Europe and English-speaking developed countries, indicating that parental education mattered more for the latter groups. When educational attainment was broadened to include graduation with a trades or college credential as well as a bachelor's degree or higher, the effect of parents' education was much weaker, and the group difference in educational attainment became small. Childhood immigrants are more likely to pursue a bachelor's degree or higher than a trades or college certification, while the opposite is true for children with Canadian-born parents. This tendency among immigrant families to prefer a bachelor's degree or higher also varied substantially by source region. After parental education and other variables were controlled for, family income during the first five years after entry to Canada had only a small effect on the child's educational attainment. The conclusion includes a discussion of the implications of the results and the mechanisms through which these effects occur.

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In Canada, immigrants represented more than half of the population in the prime working ages with at least a bachelor's degree in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields of study in 2016. They accounted for three-quarters of engineering and computer science graduates with a master's or doctorate degree. This paper examines the skill utilization and earnings of employed STEM-educated immigrants by field of study and degree level. Compared with the Canadian-born with similar levels of education and in similar fields of study, immigrants with a bachelor's degree had considerably lower skill utilization rates and earnings outcomes than those of doctoral degree holders. This is mostly because immigrant doctoral graduates are more likely to be educated in a Western country. By field of study, immigrant engineering graduates, particularly at the bachelor's level, had relatively weaker skill utilization rates and earnings outcomes; immigrant computer science graduates did somewhat better. The slightly more than half of STEM-educated immigrants who did not find a STEM job had the weakest skill utilization rates and earnings outcomes. Much of the gap between the earnings of immigrant and Canadian-born graduates was associated with differences in country of education. STEM immigrants educated in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom or France had outcomes similar to the Canadian-born.

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Labour shortages in health care professions have become a pressing issue across many Canadian jurisdictions and were especially exacerbated by the [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 pandemic. To help address these shortages, federal, provincial and territorial governments have implemented measures to facilitate the entry of skilled immigrants with health care qualifications into their respective professions, among other government actions to strengthen the health workforce. However, comprehensive data on the numbers, sociodemographic characteristics and labour market outcomes of internationally educated health care professionals (IEHPs) remain scarce.

This article provides estimates of the number of IEHPs in Canada based on 2021 Census data, shedding light on their distribution across provinces and territories. It further examines the sociodemographic characteristics of IEHPs and explores their occupational distribution across major fields of study. This article serves as a snapshot of a comprehensive report, which will be released later, offering detailed descriptive and multivariate analyses of the labour market outcomes of IEHPs. In this article, IEHPs were defined as landed immigrants who held a postsecondary certificate, diploma or degree from outside Canada in a health field of study and who reported it as their highest certificate, diploma or degree. Temporary residents and Canadian-born people who received their highest certificate, diploma or degree in health in a foreign country were excluded.

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In both Canada and the United States, immigrants constitute a disproportionately large share of the supply of university-educated labour trained in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. This article examines the Canada-U.S. differences in the occupational skill utilization and earnings of STEM-educated immigrant workers. Using data from the 2016 Census for Canada and the combined 2015 to 2017 American Community Survey, this analysis focuses on immigrants with a university degree in a STEM field who were aged 25 to 64 and arrived as adults. Over one-half of STEM-educated immigrant workers in both countries held non-STEM jobs. In Canada, only about 20 per cent of these immigrants with non-STEM jobs worked in occupations that required a university education, compared with 48 per cent in the United States. There was a large earnings gap between STEM-educated immigrants and native-born workers in Canada, even after adjusting for socio-demographic differences, while no corresponding earnings gap existed in the United States. The earnings gap in Canada was particularly large for STEM-educated immigrants holding non-STEM jobs. Possible explanations for these results are discussed.

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Earlier studies have well documented the expanding earnings gap between new immigrant workers and their Canadian-born counterparts during the 1980s and 1990s. However, significant policy changes in immigration selection and settlement have been introduced since the early 2000s, and the employment rate and entry earnings among new immigrants have been improving in recent years. Little research has been undertaken to examine whether the earnings gap between new immigrant and Canadian-born workers has recently started to close. This paper compares the employment rate and the weekly earnings of immigrant and Canadian-born workers throughout the 2000s and 2010s. It is based on information from the censuses from 2001 to 2016 and information from the Labour Force Survey from 2015 to 2019. Analyses are conducted for new immigrants (in Canada for 1 to 5 years), recent immigrants (in Canada for 6 to 10 years) and long-term immigrants (in Canada for over 10 years).

Over the 2000-to-2019 period, the employment rate for new and recent immigrant men grew faster than for Canadian-born men, and the relative employment position of new immigrant women also improved slightly. The earnings gap between immigrant workers and Canadian-born workers with similar sociodemographic characteristics widened between 2000 and 2015, with both years posting similar national unemployment rates. In the late 2010s, there was some improvement in the earnings gaps for immigrant men and women relative to their Canadian-born counterparts. This improvement may be related to the rising demand for labour during these years, since relative labour market outcomes for immigrants tend to improve during expansions and to deteriorate during contractions. It may also be related, in part, to the increased tendency to select economic immigrants from the pool of temporary foreign workers. This has been shown to improve both entry earnings and longer-term earnings.

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Canada and the United States are two major immigrant destinations with distinct immigration policies. The two countries also differ in immigration level and economy size, but their government structures, economic systems and social environment have many similarities. These similarities and differences provide a useful setting for comparative immigration research. This study compares the differences in the mismatch between the education and occupations of immigrants in Canada and the United States, operationalized by over-education. It further explores how the cross-country differences may be related to the supply of and demand for university-educated immigrants and the way they are selected.

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International students are increasingly viewed as a promising pool of skilled individuals who can be tapped for participation in the Canadian labour market. This is a key motivating factor for providing international students with pathways to obtain permanent residency. This article documents the share of international students who became landed immigrants across various sociodemographic characteristics. Findings show that international students who arrived in Canada throughout the 2000s and the early 2010s had similar rates of transition to permanent residency five years after receiving their first study permit. Among international students who arrived in the 2000s, about 3 in 10 became landed immigrants within 10 years of their arrival. This share rose to 5 in 10 master's degree students and 6 in 10 doctoral degree students. The share of international students who worked while studying or after graduation has been increasing. Six in 10 international students who were employed during their period of study or after graduation became landed immigrants within 10 years of having obtained their first study permit. Higher levels of earnings from employment while studying or after graduation are associated with an increased likelihood of transition to permanent residency.

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This article compares the labour force participation of temporary foreign workers with open work permits and employer-specific work permits in terms of their level of labour market engagement in Canada, their distribution by province and industry, and the duration of temporary residence status and rate of transition to permanent residency.

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Women who arrived in Canada as spouses of economic immigrant principal applicants were better educated and more likely to know English or French than married women who arrived in the family class. Their higher levels of human capital are related to a high degree of positive assortative mating. This study uses the 2011 National Household Survey linked to the Immigrant Landing File to examine how these differences in human capital characteristics translate into differences in labour market outcomes. Together, differences in individual characteristics and selected job characteristics accounted for nearly 70 per cent of the observed earnings gap between female spouses of economic immigrant principal applicants and married women in the family class. These results suggest that economic immigration programs, which assess and select principal applicants based on their human capital, also indirectly selected immigrant spouses with high levels of human capital and labour market involvement.

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The two-step immigration selection process - the selection of economic immigrants from among temporary foreign workers - has been expanding in Canada since the 2000s. Canadian work experience and pre-arranged employment are both important criteria in Canada's Express Entry system of economic immigration selection. Following a review of the evolution of job offers and Canadian work experience as selection criteria for economic immigrants, this article compares their relative importance as predictors of economic immigrants' initial labour market outcomes.

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