Future of work in Canada: Where do immigrants fit in?
Credit to Author: Baisakhi Roy| Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2023 19:52:01 +0000
While the overall outlook is positive for the job seeker in Canada, given the labour market shortages, employers need to find ways to support and retain immigrant talent.
When financial services professional Rajesh Acharya hit the ‘submit button’ on a job post for a telecom company in Toronto that matched his skills and experience, he felt pretty good about it. Until he got a rejection letter, almost immediately. The reasons cited was his profile did not fit the role.
Acharya believes that his profile was a perfect match. “Week on week, one applies for roles only to be told that they aren’t qualified for the position, that they are going ahead with someone else. It can get pretty demoralizing because you are clueless as to what you lack,” he says.
Acharya who has notable companies like IBM, Oracle and Capgemini on his resume decided to change tracks and hired an employment consultant. The consultant helped him rebrand and built a strategy to effectively crack the job market. He got a job almost immediately with a leading Canadian company. It’s been quite the process but he’s happy that he gets to work at a job he’s actually trained for.
“The reality is that there are plenty of jobs but nobody calls back. Companies are building their databases or ticking a box of having posted the job for a certain amount of time,” says the immigrant from Dubai.
Acharya says that some of his friends who haven’t been as lucky and are contemplating leaving Canada for better jobs either in their native countries or the U.S. and the U.K.
“In the initial days of applying and interviewing, a senior director was [recommending] me but even that didn’t work. That’s when you think that you’ve made the wrong decision of moving to Canada. The interviewer has already made up his mind,” he says.
A survey by Leger in 2022 found that almost 30 per cent of immigrants between ages 18-34 were contemplating leaving Canada by 2024 for better opportunities. Between struggling to get foreign credentials recognized, especially in licensed fields like accounting and nursing, to being led down the garden path by various newcomer organizations guaranteeing employment, even an easier path to citizenship (compared to the US or Australia) no longer seems to be an attractive incentive for immigrants to remain in Canada.
So, what does the future of work in Canada look like?
Like Acharya notes, the jobs are there for the taking and there is a significant labour shortage across most sectors. Statistics Canada quotes recent findings from the Job Vacancy and Wage Survey (JVWS) from March 2023, which states that accommodation and food services continued to have the highest job vacancy rate across all sectors (7.6 per cent) as well as businesses in manufacturing (43.8 per cent), administrative and support, waste management and remediation services (37.6 per cent) and health care and social assistance (35.1 per cent).
According to Randstad, the availability of jobs, especially across the service industry, technology and healthcare is showing steady growth. Some of the most in-demand jobs are in human resources, engineering, nursing and sales.
Salaries are also trending on the higher side despite inflation and a looming recession. This is attributed to high demand for skilled workers, rapid job growth and a workforce that is determined to negotiate for higher pay. According to the recruitment agency, some of the highest paying jobs in 2023 include financial analysts (80-120K), human resources manager (83-110K), solution architects (84 -130K) and engineers who can earn up to 115K annually. Technical jobs have higher pay due to a skills shortage in the industry as well as construction jobs are on the rise due to an increased need for housing, especially in Ontario.
Though the overall outlook is positive for the job seeker, experts warn that employers need to move quickly and efficiently to retain immigrant talent.
Experts recommend an overhaul of a system riddled with bias and a hard look at the misalignment of basic policies and systems.
“Large corporations definitely have barriers built in their systems but it’s a huge problem with small and medium enterprises as well where the point system doesn’t really align with employer needs,” says Wendy Cukier, founder of the Diversity Institute and research lead for the Future Skills Centre.
According to a study led by the Diversity Institute and Future Skills Care, newcomers and racialized groups face a higher rate of unemployment compared to their Canadian-born counterparts. Immigrants represent 27 per cent of employed workers to Canadian-born residents’ 73 per cent.
“People doing the hiring in companies really need to challenge their biases and understand what an asset a newcomer could be to their company. They not only need support pre-arrival but also in terms of navigating various systems, the more educated the newcomers are, the less satisfied they are with the support that they get. That’s something that should really concern us,” Cukier says.
Cukier also believes that the immigrant serving agencies need to provide better support. “We have to really hold settlement agencies and immigrant serving organizations to account. Many of them, funded by the government, are there to help people find pathways to employment, but they only create jobs for themselves. I think it’s unconscionable,” she says.
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