Canda’s educated immigrants face uphill job searches

“The proportion of long-term immigrants with a university degree in jobs with low education requirements rose steadily over the decade and a half surveyed,” the survey report, which accounted from the year 1991 till 2006, said.

Jobs with low education requirements include clerks, truck drivers, salespeople, cashiers and taxi drivers, it said.

The study also found that long-term female immigrants fared worse than their male counterparts.

Between 1991 and 2006, the proportion of long-term female immigrants with a university degree in jobs with low education requirements increased from 24 per cent to 29 per cent.

Meanwhile, about 12 per cent of long-term male immigrants with a university degree had jobs with low educational requirements in 1991, the agency said. Fifteen years later, that proportion increased dramatically to 21 per cent. The numbers were even higher for recent immigrants.

Just under 40 per cent of university-educated immigrant women were employed in jobs with low educational requirements, the federal agency reported.

Nearly 24 per cent of men, meanwhile, had jobs with low educational requirements. The change indicates that the troubles new immigrants often face may not be temporary, and may be exacerbated by rocky economic conditions, according to Diane Galarneau, an analyst with the Perspectives on Labour and Income magazine at Statistics Canada, who conducted the study.

The report found that it was much harder for “established” immigrants – those who had lived in Canada for 11 to 15 years – to find jobs that matched their education level in 2006 than in 1991.

Galarneau cautioned that Statistics Canada did not study the link between recession and the ability of educated immigrants to find jobs that match their skills. But the numbers seem to indicate there is an association, which could spell trouble for new immigrants coming to Canada during the current economic downturn.

Unlike degree-holding individuals born in Canada, who may lose their jobs during a recession but can probably, find work quickly or at least once the economy recovers, immigrants face a different set of challenges.

If university-educated immigrants can’t find a job that matches their skills within a few years of arriving in Canada, it becomes even more difficult to do so as time goes on, Galarneau said.

“If they don’t practise right after they’re arriving (in Canada) it’s hard because their skills are deteriorating over time,” she said.

Shifting immigration patterns also accounted for some of the changes, according to Galarneau. More immigrants are coming from Asian countries now compared to 1991, and fewer speak French or English, which could be a major obstacle in finding jobs that match their skills.