High rate of unemployment among university-educated new immigrants in Canada
Canada, 7th October: New immigrants in Canada having university education are likely to get fewer jobs than Canadian-born people with same education level, a recent study indicates.
According to the latest annual report into quality of life in Canada titled-Canada Vital Signs 2010- states that immigrants with professional credentials and having lived in Canada for a period less than five years were having a 4.1 percent higher jobless rate than the non-immigrants in Canada.
Canadians with university education were found to be having 3.4 percent unemployment rate while the rate of joblessness among immigrants in the country was 13.9 percent, the report maintains.
Meanwhile, the overall rate of unemployment among new immigrants was 15 percent as compared to 7.8 percent among Canadian workers.
Canada’s dependency on immigration is increasing due to its reducing work force and the findings are of a great concern for the country, the Community Foundations of Canada, an umbrella organization supporting charities has maintained.
Reasons for these wide differences in the rate of employment among Canadians and immigrants in Canada could be due to delay or denial in recognition of foreign credentials, language problems and insufficient Canadian work experience for newcomers in Canada.
The report findings reveal nearly 36 percent of immigrants in Canada in the age group of 25-54 years are university educated.
And if recognition of foreign credentials of all immigrants in Canada is done, then this would result in addition of around $5 billion in the economy of Canada each year, the CBC (Conference Board of Canada) states.
The provinces of Quebec and Alberta were found to be having largest differences in the rates of joblessness in Canada between immigrants and Canadians. Canadians with university education were having a jobless rate of 2.9 percent in Alberta while immigrants with similar level of education had a jobless rate of 11.5 percent.
Quebec had around 20 percent of the university-educated newcomers without any job.
Out of the total Canadian population, almost 50 percent possess some sort of post-secondary education, the official data for the year 2009 which shows an increase of around 2.0 percentage points from the year 2006.
