Canada’s work force became more educated, racially-diverse and skilled over the past five years, with a greater proportion of immigrants employed, significant growth in the number of people in professional white-collar jobs and a surge in the number of university graduates.
The latest data from Statistics Canada’s 2021 census shows a dramatic change in the makeup of the Canadian labour force between 2016 and 2021.
“The data tells a good news story. We have this notion that every economy needs to have a certain proportion of people working in low-skilled jobs, but that’s not how economies should work,” explained Mikal Skuterud, a labour economist at the University of Waterloo. “As an economy gets richer, labour should be allocated to higher skilled tasks – we are starting to see more of that in the Canadian economy.”
Immigrants are a crucial part of Canada’s changing labour force. Not only do they make up a larger share of the overall work force than ever before – especially in the core working group aged 25 to 54 – they are also more educated and tend to have a lower unemployment rate than previous cohorts.
Economists such as Prof. Skuterud and others believe the trend observed in the latest census is a direct result of reforms to the immigration system back in 2015 (the creation of the Express Entry system), which began prioritizing potential permanent residents according to the level of postsecondary education they obtained, the years of Canadian work experience they accumulated and their language proficiency.
In 2021, 27.7 per cent of the core-aged labour force (aged between 25 and 54) consisted of immigrants, compared with 25.7 per cent in 2016. In cities such as Toronto and Vancouver, immigrants made up half of the core-aged working population. In Toronto, for example, 51.9 per cent of working people aged between 25 and 54 were immigrants.
Canadians, over all, became more educated between 2016 and 2021, with nearly 33 per cent of working-aged people holding a bachelor’s degree or higher in 2021 – an increase of 4.3 percentage points since the 2016 census. More notably, recent immigrants made up nearly half the growth in the share of Canadians with a bachelor’s degree or higher.
“Immigrants are faring better in the work force than they used to. And one of the likely factors for improving outcomes of recent immigrants is that many of them have Canadian work experience, a key part of the express entry system,” said Brendon Bernard, senior economist at Indeed Canada.
Recent immigrants still face a higher unemployment rate than working people born in Canada, but that gap seems to have narrowed over the past 15 years, since the 2006 census.
Another critical labour force trend picked up by census data is the surge in the number of jobs in professional and technical services such as software development, data analytics, accounting and law.
The number of people working in these fields jumped by 17.3 per cent between 2016 and 2021, to nearly 1.5 million people, outpacing the rate of growth in all other industries.
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Mr. Bernard attributes some of this growth to the rise of the Canadian tech sector and the overall shift developed economies have taken toward becoming more digitally-intensive. “For multinational companies in the tech space, Canada offers a less expensive workforce compared to the U.S.,” he added.
The changes in the Canadian labour market mean the country will continue seeing more jobs that require university-educated individuals or very specific training, predicts Parisa Mahboubi, an economist with the C.D. Howe Institute.
Beyond professional services, the number of Canadians employed in health care surged between 2016 and 2021, due largely to the COVID-19 pandemic and an aging population.
Approximately 200,000 health care workers were added to the economy in that time frame, an increase of 16.8 per cent. Despite the number of health care jobs added, a labour shortage remains in the sector, as need is outpacing the available labour pool.
Part of this shortage can be attributed to the level of skill and training required to work in health care. In 2021, census data showed that nearly half of non-management health care workers were in occupations requiring a bachelor’s degree or higher, such as doctors or registered nurses.
Racialized people make up a significant part of the health care sector, census numbers show. Roughly 25 per cent of family physicians and general practitioners were Chinese, Arab or South Asian Canadians. Black Canadians and Filipino Canadians made up more than 30 per cent of people working as nurse aides, orderlies or in patient services.
Labour participation rates in Canada
Percentage, by racialized group
2016
2021
Korean
West Asian
Arab
South Asian
Total racialized population
Japanese
Latin American
Black
Chinese
Multiple racialized groups
Total population
Filipino
Southeast Asian
Racialized group
not included elsewhere
70
75
80
85
90
95%
the globe and mail, Source: statistics canada
Labour participation rates in Canada
Percentage, by racialized group
2016
2021
Korean
West Asian
Arab
South Asian
Total racialized population
Japanese
Latin American
Black
Chinese
Multiple racialized groups
Total population
Filipino
Southeast Asian
Racialized group
not included elsewhere
70
75
80
85
90
95%
the globe and mail, Source: statistics canada
Labour participation rates in Canada
Percentage, by racialized group
2016
2021
Korean
West Asian
Arab
South Asian
Total racialized population
Japanese
Latin American
Black
Chinese
Multiple racialized groups
Total population
Filipino
Southeast Asian
Racialized group
not included elsewhere
70
75
80
85
90
95%
the globe and mail, Source: statistics canada
Vanmala Subramaniam