Immigrants who come to Canada as children do better in the workforce and make more money than not only those newcomers who arrive here later in life but also the average Canadian, a Statistics Canada report reveals.

“Immigrants admitted to Canada as children are generally more likely to participate in postsecondary education during early adulthood and report higher median wages at the age of 30+ years compared with the reference set by all tax filers of an equivalent age in Canada,” reports the statistical and demographic services agency.

In its Socioeconomic Outcomes Of Immigrants Admitted To Canada As Children, 2022 report, Statistics Canada notes that in 2022 there had been close to two million children under 14 years old who had migrated to Canada since 1980. That’s roughly one in five immigrants to Canada.

Those children are more likely than are non-immigrant children in Canada to grow up and attend college or university.

“In 2021, among young adults aged 18 to 30 years, participation in postsecondary education (measured by whether a person claimed tuition tax credits) was generally higher for immigrants admitted to Canada as children than for the overall Canadian population in the same age group,” notes Statistics Canada.

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“Broadly speaking, the younger an immigrant child was when admitted, the more likely they were to participate in postsecondary education.”

Among 20-year-old immigrants, more than three-quarters, 77.3 per cent, of those who came to Canada as children four years old or younger went on to college or university.

The college and university attendance rate for non-immigrant Canadians is 59.9 per cent.

In the long run, that extra education pays off for immigrants who arrived in Canada as children.

“For people aged 25 to 30 years, the median wages of immigrants admitted as children equalled or surpassed those of all tax filers,” notes Statistics Canada.

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“By the age of 30 years, immigrants admitted as children had a median wage of $54,900, 17.6 per cent higher than that of all tax filers in Canada of the same age ($46,690).”

Those findings by Statistics Canada dovetail with those of another report, The Improvement In The Labour Market Outcomes Of Recent Immigrants Since The Mid-2010s, which reveals that the financial fortunes of immigrants to Canada have been improving.

“Since the early 2010s, recent immigrants in the 25 to 54 age group have seen a faster growth in employment rates, compared with their Canadian-born counterparts … (and) …. recent immigrants have also experienced faster earnings growth compared with Canadian-born workers since the mid-2010s,” reports the statistical and demographic services agency.

Employment Pay Gap Diminishing As Immigrants Approaching Parity With Canadians

In that report, Statistics Canada noted there was a 10.7 percentage point jump in the employment rate of recent immigrants from 2010 to 2023 whereas the employment rate of the Canadian-born population rose by only 4.1 per cent during the same period.

“Consequently, the employment rate gap between the two groups narrowed from 13.1 percentage points in 2010 to 6.5 percentage points in 2023,” notes that report.

“In line with the rise in employment rates, the unemployment rate also declined among recent immigrants in the 25 to 54 age group, from 12.1 per cent in 2010 to 6.2 per cent in 2022 and 6.6 per cent in 2023.”

With that drop in the unemployment rate for recent immigrants, the gap in the unemployment rate between recent immigrants and Canadian-born workers narrowed from 5.7 percentage points in 2010 to 2.6 percentage points in 2023.

Immigrants are now closer to enjoying income parity with other Canadians.

“The gap in weekly earnings between recent immigrants and Canadian-born workers decreased from 19.9 per cent in 2015 to 13.4 per cent in 2020 among men and from 20.4 per cent to 15.5 per cent among women,” notes the report.

Although recent immigrants still earn significantly less than Canadian-born workers, the recent trend marks a departure from the long-standing pattern of stagnation in the relative earnings of recent immigrant men and the worsening trend in the relative earnings of recent immigrant women from 2000 to 2015.

“With similar socioeconomic characteristics, recent immigrant men earned 16.7 per cent less than their Canadian-born counterparts in 2000 and 17.3 per cent less in 2015,” notes the report.

“Likewise, recent immigrant women earned 22.1 per cent less than Canadian-born women in 2000 and 25.4 per cent less in 2015. Thanks to the recent improvements, the earnings gap for recent immigrants in 2020 was the narrowest in the past two decades.”

Statistics Canada reports this trend will continue much longer as the rate of arrival of new workers through permanent and temporary immigration programs seems likely to outstrip job growth in the near future.

“The dynamics of labour supply and demand are poised to change,” notes the report.

When Canada was welcoming an average of 276,000 new immigrants annually from 2010 to 2019, adding a minimum of 148,000 people to the labour supply each year, the number of employed temporary residents was also rising from 14,000 in 2011 to 108,000 by 2019.