Immigration.ca - Canada Immigration News - February 2010
New statistics are illustrating a trend that many of Canada’s immigrants are already all too familiar with. The vast majority of foreign-trained professionals are not working in their field upon arrival to Canada.
The latest figures from Statistics Canada show that in 2006 of the approximately 284,000 employed immigrants who held training degrees and certificates in regulated occupations, only 24 per cent were working in their trained occupation. For immigrants trained in Canada, that number, labelled the “match rate,” rises to 53 percent.
Statistics Canada noted that, across Canada, match rates varied according to both profession and to region. The highest match rate was found amoung doctors and nurses, at 56 percent. The match rate was 19 percent for engineering students and the lowest rate was 12 percent for foreign-trained lawyers.
Eastern Canada, Alberta and Saskatchewan all had higher than average match rates, while Quebec and British Columbia were the two provinces where foreign-trained professionals were least likely to be working in their chosen field.
Canada’s immigrant workers forced to look outside their area of expertise often are found working in a wide range of employment, from sales and clerical jobs, to technical positions in the sciences.
Source: Montreal Gazette
