Employment of Immigrant Women in Canada

Each year, many immigrant women begin a new life by immigrating to Canada with most of them being admitted under economic or family classes. Applicants can be admitted under economic class, family Class, refugee Class, or other immigrant category, which does not include those 3 classes. Most newcomers face many hardships once they immigrate and go through many challenges before they settle down. One of the barriers immigrant women face in Canada is finding an adequate job and earning money.

Factors affecting Employment of Immigrant Women in Canada

Language Barriers

One factor that affects finding an employment among immigrants is the issue of language barrier. Language barrier affects immigrant women in many ways, it causes social exclusion from others, it is very time consuming to learn it, and in many cases, it requires financial commitment in order to take language classes.

Even though some immigrants are fluent in English, for most cases, when they want find an adequate career related to their degree in their hometown, they must upgrade their degree here, and for that they are supposed take English tests (such as LPI, IELTS, Toefl, etc.) or English language classes to upgrade their qualifications or eligibility for college admission.

Experiences of Racism

Experiences of racism and exclusion from society is another factor that affects employment of immigrant women. Some immigrant women speak of not even being approached to have interviews because of their names, or even when they make it to an interview, they experience getting judged for their accents. Some women who were able to find a job, describe experiences racial discrimination at work, like not being able to socialize with colleagues and feeling left out.

Education

In order to find a job in Canada, most adequate jobs favour people who have high skills, work experience, fluency is languages, and advanced education. For immigrant women these factors are looked at in more depth and with more restriction than it is for Canadian born women. Although almost half of all immigrants between the ages of 25 and 64 held a bachelor’s degree or higher in 2016, but finding employment can be a challenge for them due to lack of experience in Canada.

Through an intersectional lens, we can see that many factors can contribute to finding a career in Canada, such as being an immigrant, a women, having different sociacultural and racial background, having different levels of education, and etc.

Job opportunities

Labour Market in 2006

The 2006 Census estimated that 30% of immigrant women coming to Canada recently, worked in sales and service occupations, which is a higher proportion than for Canadian-born women (22%). Although recent immigrant women who had a university degree were somewhat less likely to work in sales and services (23%), the proportion that did so was still higher than that for their Canadian-born women (7.4%).

Among recent immigrant women with a university degree, 5.8% reported working in occupations unique to processing, manufacturing and utilities. In contrast, 0.4% of Canadian-born women who held a university degree, reported working in these occupations.

Comparing in terms of management positions, 11% of Canadian-born women were employed in those occupations, but for recent immigrant women it was 6.4%.

According to the results of a Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada, there has been a decline in the number of immigrant women reporting difficulties related to employment settlement. However, among those who were still experiencing challenges by the fourth year, a large proportion (32%) reported that from all the hardships they faced as immigrants, finding an adequate job was the greatest one.

Labour Market from 2006 to 2017 in General

In 2017, for the core working-ages of 25 to 54, 60% of employment gains were accounted for by landed immigrants. This is mainly because the population growth among immigrants was higher than Canadian-born in this age group. In contrast, from those aged 55 and older, 74% of employment growth was attributed to the Canadian-born.Overall, immigrant employment rate has increased slightly since 2006, but the employment-rate gap between immigrants and the Canadian-born has remained relatively stable.

Employment Rate

Among the female immigrant population, recent arrivals were the least likely to be employed. In 2006, the percentage of recent immigrant women aged 25 to 54 who were employed was 56.8%. In contrast, the employment rate for the total immigrant women population in that age group was 70.5% and for their Canadian-born counterparts, 78.5%. Nevertheless, in 2001 employment rate was 53.2%, which means recent immigrant women experienced a slightly better employment situation in 2006.

Employment rates also increase when staying longer as a resident in Canada. In 2006, the employment rate among core working age immigrant women who had arrived in the 1990s was 69.5%, and for those who had arrived before 1991,was 77.3%.

Gender Difference

Not only do immigrant women in Canada earn less than Canadian-born women, but they also earn less than male immigrants. A study has shown that women who immigrate with their families, especially their husbands, tend to be more adaptable with whatever job they get, since they struggle more with balancing family care on the side of finding a job. The reason for that is because women tend to sacrifice for their husband’s career by staying home or taking care of their children. Due to the responsibilities women have, they can’t afford or take the time to translate their skills into a Canadian context in order to upgrade and meet the requirements. Therefore, they usually end up in jobs that don’t match their skills and because of that they tend to earn less. Overall many factors contribute and impact employment of immigrant women, and it is important to look at this topic with an intersectional lens, because its not just being an immigrant that affects employment, but also being a women, wife, having different sociocultural and racial background, having different levels of education, and etc. that affect it.