OTTAWA - Immigrant employment, seen as a way to offset projected labour shortages, increased sharply last year in Canada, easily outpacing that of native-born workers, Statistics Canada reported Tuesday.
But the increase wasn´t enough to prevent the gap between immigrants and native-born Canadians from widening.
Almost all the gains in immigrant employment were among those who have been in Canada more than a decade, with little increase among those in Canada for five years or less, the federal agency said.
Employment among core working-age immigrants -- 25 to 54 years -- grew by a healthy 2.1 per cent last year, compared with a 1.3 per cent increase for native-born Canadian counterparts, it said.
Despite that stronger growth, the immigrant employment rate edged up only 0.2 to 77.9 per cent as their population increased much faster, while the already higher employment rate among Canadian-born core-age workers rose 0.7 to 83.8 per cent, it noted.
Earlier this month, Statistics Canada -- using 2006 census findings -- reported that recent immigrants were also losing the battle to close the earnings gap with Canadian-born workers.
Still, the updated 2007 report on the job market for immigrants found that employment among core working-age immigrants reached nearly 2.5 million last year, and full-time employment, which accounted for 90 per cent of those jobs, increased by a robust three per cent.
The report is the latest to help the government assess progress in achieving a long-standing goal of more quickly and fully integrating immigrants into the Canadian job market. Immigrants are seen as a key to offsetting the impact of the aging of the population and the loss of workers and skills as baby boomers retire.
More than half the increase in employment among core working-age immigrants, 28,000, was in Quebec, which was followed by Alberta with an increase of 18,000.
In contrast, employment among core working-age immigrants in British Columbia declined even as employment among their Canadian-born core counterparts increased, reflecting a decline in their population.
While the jobless rate for immigrant women remained higher and their employment rate lower than that of immigrant men, employment for immigrant women increased by a substantial 47,000 in 2007, and accounted for most of the overall job gains for core working-age immigrants.
"As the population of working-age Canadians increases, there is an expectation that employment should rise by similar levels," Statistics Canada said. "The realities, however, were different for the Canadian born and for immigrants."
Mario Calla, executive director of COSTI Immigrant Services, a Toronto-based organization that provides employment and other services, said he was "disappointed by not surprised" by the finding that the employment gap between immigrants and native-born Canadians widened further last year.
"We know that some 60 per cent of immigrants come with some post-secondary education and yet we also know that some 60 per cent of immigrants are not working in the field in which they trained," Calla noted in an interview.
Initiatives by governments, such as enhanced language training and others, are helping and over time should reduce the employment and the earnings gap somewhat, but won´t eliminate it, Calla said.
Some of the barriers are on the immigrant side, such as a lack of fluency in English or French, a lack of knowledge of the Canadian job market and the expectations of employers. Barriers on the other side included a "mindset" among some Canadian employers who quickly dismiss academic credentials of immigrant job applicants, he said.
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