IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bca/bocadp/25-08.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Shift in Canadian Immigration Composition and its Effect on Wages

Author

Listed:
  • Julien Champagne
  • Antoine Poulin-Moore
  • Mallory Long

Abstract

We document recent changes in Canadian immigration, marked by an increasing prevalence of temporary residency. Using microdata from Statistics Canada's Labour Force Survey, we show that temporary workers' characteristics and nominal wages have diverged from those of Canadian-born workers. Between 2015 and 2024, temporary workers have become younger, less experienced and more likely to migrate from lower-income countries. As well, the shares of temporary workers in skilled occupations have declined moderately. Throughout this period, the average nominal wage gap between temporary and Canadian-born workers has more than doubled, widening from -9.5% to -22.6%. Further, we estimate Mincer regressions to assess how these evolving characteristics have contributed to the growing wage gap. Our findings show that this increase can be explained by observable characteristics. Our results suggest that aggregate nominal wages would have been, on average, 0.7% higher in 2023–24 had the characteristics of temporary workers remained unchanged over the past decade.

Suggested Citation

  • Julien Champagne & Antoine Poulin-Moore & Mallory Long, 2025. "The Shift in Canadian Immigration Composition and its Effect on Wages," Discussion Papers 2025-08, Bank of Canada.
    • Handle: RePEc:bca:bocadp:25-08
    DOI: 10.34989/sdp-2025-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.34989/sdp-2025-8
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2025/05/staff-discussion-paper-2025-8/
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.34989/sdp-2025-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Labour markets; Productivity;

    JEL classification:

    • J20 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - General
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bca:bocadp:25-08. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bocgvca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.