Canada’s work force became more educated, racially-diverse and skilled over the past five years, with a greater proportion of immigrants employed, significant growth in the number of people in professional white-collar jobs and a surge in the number of university graduates.

The latest data from Statistics Canada’s 2021 census shows a dramatic change in the makeup of the Canadian labour force between 2016 and 2021.

“The data tells a good news story. We have this notion that every economy needs to have a certain proportion of people working in low-skilled jobs, but that’s not how economies should work,” explained Mikal Skuterud, a labour economist at the University of Waterloo. “As an economy gets richer, labour should be allocated to higher skilled tasks – we are starting to see more of that in the Canadian economy.”

Immigrants are a crucial part of Canada’s changing labour force. Not only do they make up a larger share of the overall work force than ever before – especially in the core working group aged 25 to 54 – they are also more educated and tend to have a lower unemployment rate than previous cohorts.

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Source: THE GLOBE AND MAIL, (SOURCE: STATISTICS CANADA), VANMALA SUBRAMANIAM, 30 novembre 2022