And the award for the most-thought-about question when it comes to job hunting in Canada goes to… “Are immigrants walking away with my job?”
There is a constant and undeniable fact about any economy: when things go south, everyone gets screwed.
It doesn’t matter whether you were born here, became a Canadian citizen years ago, or arrived in the country last month. Inflation doesn’t check your citizenship status before increasing the price of groceries. Your landlord doesn’t ask whether you are an immigrant before raising your rent. And when interest rates rise, the mortgage payment doesn’t magically become cheaper because you were born in Canada.
Yet somewhere along the way, an increasingly common narrative has emerged: immigrants are taking all the jobs.
But is that really what is happening?
The Canadian job market has become difficult for a large number of people. New graduates are struggling to find their first jobs. Experienced professionals are competing for positions that once attracted far fewer applicants. People who have spent years building careers are being laid off and discovering that their experience does not necessarily translate into another job quickly.
And immigrants are struggling too.
In fact, for many newcomers, the experience can be particularly frustrating because they are trying to establish themselves in an already difficult market while simultaneously dealing with the additional challenge of having to prove themselves all over again.
When the economy hurts, it doesn’t ask where you were born
Consider something as basic as groceries.
If the price of bread, milk, vegetables or meat increases, an immigrant doesn’t walk into a supermarket and receive a special “newcomer discount.” They pay the same price as everyone else.
When rents increase, immigrants don’t have a separate rental market where landlords offer them cheaper apartments.
When electricity bills, transportation costs, insurance premiums or mortgage payments increase, the financial pressure is shared.
And when taxes are deducted from a paycheque, the amount isn’t determined by whether someone’s parents were born in Canada.
This doesn’t mean that every person experiences economic hardship in exactly the same way. People have different incomes, savings, family circumstances and access to support. But the basic economic pressures of everyday life are not restricted to one group.
So why do we sometimes talk about immigrants as though they are somehow insulated from the same economic realities?
The job market isn’t a pie with a fixed number of slices
One of the biggest problems with the “immigrants are taking our jobs” argument is the assumption that employment works like a pie.
There are supposedly a fixed number of jobs. Immigrants arrive, take some of those jobs, and therefore fewer jobs remain for everyone else.
The reality is considerably more complicated.
Employers hire people because they need particular skills, experience, availability, qualifications or combinations of these things. The labour market is constantly changing. Companies expand, contract, automate, relocate, restructure and create new positions while eliminating others.
And immigrants are not a single category of worker.
An immigrant could be a software engineer, truck driver, nurse, teacher, accountant, construction worker, entrepreneur, designer, researcher, tradesperson or someone starting from scratch in an entirely new field.
The same applies to Canadian-born workers.
Reducing an enormous and diverse workforce to “immigrants versus Canadians” doesn’t explain why some people are finding jobs while others aren’t.
The uncomfortable reality: many immigrants are struggling too
Perhaps the most overlooked part of this discussion is the number of immigrants who are themselves unemployed, underemployed or working far below their qualifications.
Someone may arrive in Canada with years of professional experience and still discover that Canadian employers want “Canadian experience.”
A qualified professional may end up accepting an entry-level position.
Someone with management experience may find themselves competing for jobs they would previously have considered junior.
And someone who has worked successfully in another country may spend months applying for positions without getting an interview.
That doesn’t sound like someone “walking away with all the jobs.”
It sounds like someone trying desperately to get one.
Why does the perception persist?
There are several reasons.
First, immigration is highly visible. When a large number of newcomers arrive in a relatively short period, people notice. They see newcomers looking for housing, applying for jobs, attending colleges, working in businesses and building new lives.
But visibility isn’t the same thing as causation.
Second, economic frustration naturally looks for someone to blame.
When a person sends out dozens of applications and receives no response, it is understandable that they might ask, “Who is getting these jobs?”
That frustration is real.
But frustration can sometimes turn into an overly simplistic explanation: “They are getting the jobs because they are immigrants.”
That conclusion requires evidence, not simply frustration.
Third, social media rewards simple explanations.
“Canada’s economy is experiencing a complicated combination of inflation, high living costs, changing interest rates, productivity challenges, corporate restructuring, technological change and labour-market mismatches” isn’t exactly a viral headline.
“Immigrants are taking your jobs” is.
The simpler the explanation, the easier it is to share.
But let’s not pretend there aren’t legitimate concerns
Acknowledging that immigrants are struggling doesn’t mean every concern about immigration is imaginary.
Canada can have genuine debates about immigration levels, infrastructure, housing supply, healthcare capacity, education, wages and labour-market planning.
Those are legitimate public-policy questions.
If immigration increases faster than housing or infrastructure can accommodate population growth, people have every right to ask whether the system is being managed properly.
If employers use immigration to fill positions while avoiding investments in training, that deserves scrutiny.
If temporary workers or newcomers are being exploited through low wages or poor working conditions, that needs to be addressed.
But those are policy and economic questions.
They are very different from blaming an entire group of people for the difficulties of the labour market.
The person competing for the same job isn’t necessarily your enemy
There is another uncomfortable truth.
A Canadian-born worker and an immigrant can apply for the same position.
They can both be unemployed.
They can both have mortgages or rent to pay.
They can both have children.
They can both be struggling with grocery bills.
They can both have spent years building a career.
And they can both be rejected.
The immigrant isn’t necessarily the reason the Canadian-born applicant didn’t get the job.
And the Canadian-born applicant isn’t necessarily the reason the immigrant didn’t get it.
Sometimes there is simply one position and dozens, or hundreds, of applicants.
The real problem may be a labour market where there are more qualified applicants than available positions.
Turning those applicants against each other doesn’t create another position.
We should be asking better questions
Instead of asking: “Why are immigrants taking our jobs?”
Perhaps we should be asking: “Why are there not enough good jobs for the people who are looking for them?”
Instead of asking: “Why are newcomers getting opportunities?”
Perhaps we should ask: “Why aren’t we creating an economy where both newcomers and people who have lived here their entire lives can build secure careers?”
Instead of making workers compete based on where they were born, perhaps we should focus on the things that actually influence employment: skills, education, experience, training, productivity, economic growth and the number and quality of jobs being created.
Canada doesn’t have an immigrant problem every time someone can’t find a job
There is a difference between discussing immigration policy and blaming immigrants.
Canada can debate how many people it should welcome, what categories should be prioritised, how temporary immigration should be managed and whether the country’s infrastructure can support population growth.
Those conversations are necessary.
But when someone loses a job, struggles to find employment or can’t afford their rent, the easiest person to blame isn’t always the person responsible.
The immigrant working beside you may be experiencing exactly the same anxiety.
They may be sending out applications every day.
They may be sitting at home wondering why nobody is calling.
They may have qualifications that aren’t being recognised.
They may be accepting work far below their previous experience just to keep paying the bills.
And they may be wondering whether the country they came to in search of opportunity still has one for them.
At the end of the day, inflation doesn’t discriminate, rent doesn’t discriminate, and unemployment doesn’t check citizenship before knocking on someone’s door.
When the economy struggles, ordinary people struggle.
Perhaps instead of fighting over who supposedly took the last slice of the pie, we should be asking why we aren’t baking enough pies in the first place.
Image by Niek Verlaan from Pixabay
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