At The End Of The Day, Even For Immigrants It’s About The Jobs
David Campbell is a Moncton-based economic development consultant and co-host of the Huddle podcast, Insights. The following piece was originally published on his blog, It’s the Economy, Stupid!, on Substack.
Over the weekend, I was reading a 2019 report published by the Coalition of Inclusive Municipalities entitled Welcoming Immigrants and Refugees to Canada: The Role of Municipalities. It is an interesting report with what I thought to be compelling insights into the role of municipalities.
However, what struck me most was the chart showing the greatest difficulties new immigrants faced since arriving in Canada four years after arrival.
As shown below, the greatest difficulty by a wide margin was “finding an adequate job.” While I am not going to isolate any specific issue, if you look at what immigrants say are not particular difficulties, sometimes they seem to be where we are putting the most emphasis.
Now, all of these things are important and, depending on the community, some may rise or fall in importance (think of housing right now in New Brunswick, probably a little higher than 4 percent).
But I have been saying for more than a decade that the biggest issue is the alignment of newcomers to jobs in their field, or to jobs that leverage their skills and background.
Even though it is getting better in recent years, I still see this as a top challenge in New Brunswick. Too many newcomers are working in jobs well below their skills level.
Now I know folks working in this area will say it is complicated: many newcomers purposely work a job well below their skills or education level just to get Canadian work experience or until they get their Permanent Residency.
But remember the chart below covers immigrants four years after arrival.
We need to do a better job of attracting folks that have skills and interest to develop their careers in areas where there is demand (including entrepreneurial ventures).
I realize this will never be perfect but if a survey of New Brunswick newcomers was to reveal that finding an adequate job was way down on the list of difficulties, I believe it would mean that we were seeing far greater retention of newcomers.
Huddle publishes commentaries from groups and individuals on important business issues facing the Maritimes. These commentaries do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Huddle. To submit a commentary for consideration, contact editor Mark Leger: [email protected].
November 24, 2021 @ 8:15 am
Thank you for recognizing that the job market is a massive hurdle for immigrants, David. Something that nobody wants to talk about is that there is a huge amount of discrimination that immigrants face in the job market in New Brunswick. They have the skills and experience required for jobs, but are regularly overlooked by HR Managers.
I’m an immigrant and have had a number of experiences of discrimination in my pursuit for work. I was rejected for a job and not given feedback, and told that the reason why my application was rejected was ‘a matter of choosing some over people others’. Then I found out that a group of people were interviewed for the same job with less experience than me.
When you experience things like this over and over again, you don’t feel welcome and it taints your experience of New Brunswick. I’m grateful to have a job that corresponds to my experience now (but I am part of the lucky few), but the things I experienced in the early days here have left an impact on me and I don’t see myself staying in New Brunswick long term because of that. I am not alone in this, lots of immigrants feel the same way.
January 12, 2022 @ 12:00 am
With new Brunswick being dead last in almost every category I’m surprised Canada call this place a real province.
No jobs , highest taxes in country, no soccer CPL or basketball teams CEBL, almost never someone to cheer for from New Brunswick in Olympics in any sport.
I hope this all changes and I hope it’s a immigrant that does it