Temporary foreign workers switch jobs and earn more after becoming permanent residents, study finds

Of note, not terribly surprising but good to see the data behind it:

…The research, which was conducted by economists at universities in Toronto and Chicago, found several benefits for workers who transitioned to permanent residency status.

Temporary foreign workers who were granted permanent residency in Canada between 2004 and 2014 – and thus were no longer on closed work permits which tied them to a single employer – saw an earnings increase of 5.7 per cent three years after they obtained PR status. 

The workers directly benefited from being able to switch positions, the researchers found. There was a “sharp” and “immediate” increase in the probability of a job-to-job transition of 21.7 percentage points over the three years, the paper estimates. And many of those workers switched into better-paying industries. 

“Our main question of interest when we began this research was: what is the effect of being on a closed permit relative to an open permit?” said Kory Kroft, a professor of economics at University of Toronto, and one of the paper’s authors. 

“The main takeaway is once you relax the restrictions, you see a big increase in job mobility. You find that immigrants who were clustered at low-wage jobs quickly sorted themselves into higher-wage jobs.” 

The TFW program is a key immigration stream in Canada that allows employers to hire mostly low-wage foreign workers on a temporary basis in sectors where the government determines there is a shortage of domestic labour, such as agriculture….

Source: Temporary foreign workers switch jobs and earn more after becoming permanent residents, study finds