Canada is potentially heading for a labour supply decline as immigration policy abruptly changes

2024/10/24 Leave a comment

Hard rather than soft landing, albeit necessary correction:

A series of rapid policy changes aimed at reducing the temporary resident population in Canada could lead to an overall shrinking of the labour force and a potential economic slowdown, economists predict.

A new report from Bank of Nova Scotia says that Ottawa could be “over-correcting” in its attempt to rein in the number of temporary residents in the country, which topped three million people for the first time this July, or 7.3 per cent of the total population.

The bank’s economists predict that the cumulative effect of Ottawa’s shift in immigration policy could lead to a 1-per-cent contraction in Canada’s labour force over the next two years and weakening economic growth if businesses do not boost productivity accordingly.

The federal government announced new restrictions to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program on Monday, raising the minimum wage requirements for the high-wage stream of the program – a move that Ottawa says is designed to incentivize the hiring of domestic workers….

Source: Canada is potentially heading for a labour supply decline as immigration policy abruptly changes

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Canada’s immigration system is failing recent immigrants themselves

2024/08/31 Leave a comment

Of note:

The unemployment rate for immigrants who arrived within the past five years rose to nearly 13 per cent in July, which was seven percentage points higher than the unemployment rate for workers born here. Aside from the early months of COVID-19, that’s the largest unemployment gap for recent immigrants in more than a decade, Bank of Montreal senior economic Robert Kavcic wrote in a research note.

“The reality now is that the current rate of inflow is not getting readily absorbed, which is doing no favour to the domestic job market (see youth unemployment), and no favour to those coming to Canada,” he wrote.

It’s a stark reversal from what had been a shining feature of the Canadian immigration experience. Starting in the early 2010s the unemployment rate for newcomers who arrived within the previous five years began to fall faster than the unemployment rate for Canadian-born workers, which itself was also on the decline. In fact, by 2018 immigrants who’d arrived within the previous five years were more likely to be employed than native-born Canadians.

A similar though less pronounced improvement unfolded for immigrants who’d landed five to 10 years earlier, which has since reversed. Meanwhile, by the time immigrants are here for more than a decade, their unemployment rate is largely indistinguishable from that of native-born workers.

Source: Canada’s immigration system is failing recent immigrants themselves

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