Foreign workers in Canada: Differences in the transition to permanent residency across work permit programs

Retaining and recruiting young skilled workers are important for any community, but perhaps even more so for communities where the main language spoken is a minority official language. This article informs the issue by calculating the share of youth who grew up in a province and eventually obtained a postsecondary education, but who left to work in another part of the country (termed “skill loss”). Likewise, the article also looks at young postsecondary graduates who entered a province to work, as a share of that province’s initial population of homegrown young postsecondary graduates (termed “skill gain”). The focus is on minority official language speakers—individuals who speak an official language that is not the main language spoken in their home province or in their province of work (i.e., English in Quebec and French elsewhere). The article highlights several interesting findings. For example, New Brunswick registered a net loss of one in five (or -19% of) young, skilled French speakers who obtained their postsecondary education between 2010 and 2017 and were followed two years after graduation. The net losses in New Brunswick were greater among degree holders (one in four). In contrast, Alberta was by far the largest net gainer of young skilled minority official language speakers (70%). Two out of three departing young skilled French speakers from Ontario (67%) obtained their postsecondary credentials in Ontario prior to leaving, far ahead of all other provinces examined. However, Ontario saw net gains overall, especially among degree holders, as well as among graduates of generally higher-paying fields of study.