Overall, the economic outlooks show strong employment growth over the next few years with many opportunities for newcomers.
At the beginning of the pandemic, immigrants who had landed in the last five years experienced higher unemployment levels than Canadian-born workers.
However, over the course of the pandemic, that shifted.
As of January 2022, the employment rate for newcomers is now 7% above its pre-pandemic average.
“Immigrants had this major decrease initially in their total employment levels,” says Marc Desormeaux, senior economist at Scotiabank. “But there’s been a fast bounce back since – faster than the bounce back for Canadian-born workers. Immigrant workers are now well above where they were before the pandemic.”
Desormeaux expects this to continue and sees it as a good sign for future immigrant job growth.
Canadian labour shortages
What’s concerning Desormeaux is the mounting labour shortages all sectors are currently experiencing.
“Labour shortages are a real constraint on economic growth and the economy’s ability to recover from COVID-19,” he says.
Labour shortages, which occur when businesses would like to produce more or operate more hours but aren’t able to do so because they can’t hire enough workers with the skill set they need, limit profit and economic growth. In the latest survey by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, about half of respondents indicated that a shortage of skilled labour was holding them back.
“Canada had about 913,000 job vacancies in the third quarter of 2021. That was the highest ever recorded number for a single quarter,” says Desormeaux. “That rate isn’t typical — which speaks to the particular nature of this downturn. Normally, labour shortages are something that emerges after a period of extended growth. We’re seeing these very tight labour markets with a lot of labour shortages fairly early in the economic cycle.”
While no sector is immune to the difficulties of finding staff, Desormeaux reports that some sectors are experiencing higher rates.
“We’re seeing the tightest conditions in what we call ‘high contact sectors’ like accommodation, food service, and live performance or other industries where economic performance is most closely tied to people’s ability to congregate in groups,” he says. “But this is the same story across most industries. Financial services, technology, and construction have a lot of job shortages as well.”
Desormeaux believes that some of the labour shortages are the result of lockdowns in the high contact sectors, during which workers moved on to other fields or went back to school. But even before the pandemic, researchers were talking about skills shortages in areas like the tech sector, and large-scale investments in infrastructure revitalization is fueling construction skills shortages. Desormeaux expects immigrants to play a key role in helping Canada solve these skills challenges.
