Will They Ever Converge? Earnings of Immigrants and Canadian-born Workers Over the Last Two Decades

Abstract

Using Census data covering the 1980-2000 period, we examine what outcomes would be necessary for today's recent immigrant cohorts to achieve earnings parity with Canadian-born workers. Our results show that today's recent immigrants would have to experience a drastic steepening of their relative age-earnings profile in the near future for their earnings to converge with their Canadianborn counterparts. The reason is simple: the greater relative earnings growth experienced by recent immigrant cohorts has only partially offset the drastic deterioration in their relative earnings at entry.

Liability-of-foreignness effects on job success of immigrant job seekers

“…Third, over the period of 1971 to 1991, there had been a rapid rise in natives' education levels as compared to those of immigrants over that same time period (Reitz, 2001). Finally, the trend in lowerentry earnings has been experienced not only by immigrants, but also by native-born workers (Aydemir & Skuterud, 2005;Frenette & Morissette, 2005).…”

“…Previous research on the employment impact of immigration policy has been mostly focused on the factors (e.g., economic recession, structural changes towards a point system, educational background of immigrants) influencing the ability of immigrants to assimilate into the host country labor market (Aydemir & Skuterud, 2005;Bloom et al, 1995;Frenette & Morissette, 2005;Grant, 1999;Moore & Pacey, 2003;Reitz, 2001). …”

“…Studies have consistently found that recent immigrants continue to encounter significant barriers when searching for jobs in the labor market of their destination countries (Aydemir & Skuterud, 2005;Frenette & Morissette, 2005: Kahanec & Zaiceva, 2009Wald & Fang, 2009). Immigrant job search is a process of selecting different search methods that immigrants use to identify job opportunities and evaluate strategies for job success in their country of immigration (Greve, Salaff, & Chan, 2007).…”

Income Growth of New Immigrants in Canada

“…There is general consensus that newer immigrants face significant disadvantage both initially and over time (e.g. Bloom, Grenier and Gunderson, 1995;Reitz, 2001;Frenette and Morissette, 2003;Aydemir and Skuterud, 2005), and that this disadvantage is greater for non-European or visible minority immigrants than for those of European origins (e.g. Baker and Benjamin, 1997;Pendakur and Pendakur, 1998;Hum and Simpson, 1999;Swidinsky and Swidinsky, 2002).…”

Is gateway city clustering behind Canada's declining immigrant home‐ownership rates?

“…Immigrants now face high levels of employment mismatch and labour-market precariousness (Vosko et al, 2003;Galarneau and Morissette, 2004), their earnings have deteriorated (Baker and Benjamin, 1994;Frenette and Morissette, 2003), they now spend more time in poorer-quality neighbourhoods (Fong and Wilkes, 2003;Hou, 2004), and their home-ownership rates have declined (Haan, 2005b). Furthermore, the duration of this malaise appears to be lengthening in recent years (Frenette and Morissette, 2003;Haan, 2007).…”