Christopher Worswick

If immigration can benefit the Canadian economy, but must be limited to realize the benefit, what is the optimal level? The Canadian government is increasing immigration rates to levels not reached since the 1920s in the hope of addressing labour shortages and sluggish economic growth. We argue that economic immigration in the Canadian context should aim to raise GDP per capita in the population, including the newcomers, and examine the potential for increases in Canadian immigration rates to achieve this objective. Our analysis suggests that Canada is not well positioned to leverage heightened immigration to increase GDP per capita owing primarily to weak capital investment and quantity–quality tradeoffs in immigrant selection. We propose a policy rule for defining the optimal level of economic immigration.

We examine the impact of job displacement and serious health problems on multiple measures of individual and household well-being using longitudinal data. We extend the previous literature by examining whether these shocks have differential effects for the native-born and immigrants and whether shock mitigation strategies and their effectiveness differ by immigration status. Our results suggest that both immigrants and native-born individuals have access to similar institutional and other formal and informal risk-sharing arrangements such that they are able to mitigate shocks against job loss or illness almost equally.

We assess the current state of knowledge in the economics of immigration and consider how economic theories of knowledge can be used to further the goal of developing a just immigration policy. In the process, we highlight the contributions of economists working in Canada and Canadian economists internationally in furthering our understanding of this important research area. We identify research gaps such as the need for more research on the underlying causes of the poor returns to foreign work experience for immigrants from non‐traditional source countries and the effect of immigrants on stimulating innovation. More research is also needed on the implications of temporary foreign worker (TFW) programs and the growing importance of employers in immigrant selection systems.

We analyze the process of immigrant selection and occupational outcomes of international medical graduates (IMGs) in the United States and Canada. We find that in Canada, where a point system has been in place, IMGs are less likely to be employed as physicians than are IMGs in the United States, where employer nomination is a more important entry path for IMGs. We also find that when the point system in Canada did not have occupational restrictions, IMGs had a relatively low probability of working as physicians.

Using longitudinal data for Canada, we analyze the incidence and wage returns to employer supported course enrollment for men and women. Availability of confidential data, along with a relatively rich set of observable covariates, lead us to the estimation of difference-in-differences matching models of the effect of employer supported course enrolment on wages. The estimated average treatment effects on the treated range from 5.5 to 7.2 percent for men and 7.1 to 9.0 for women. While high-skilled workers show disproportionately higher rates of participation in employer-supported training, we observe no wage premiums for these types of workers. Statistically significant positive wage returns are found, on the other hand, for low-skilled workers.JEL codes:C14, I20, J24, J31, M53

The earnings and occupational task requirements of immigrants to Canada are analyzed. The growing education levels of immigrants in the 1990s have not led to a large improvement in earnings as one might expect if growing computerization and the resulting technological change was leading to a rising return to non‐routine cognitive skills and a greater wage return to university education. Controlling for education, we find a pronounced cross‐arrival cohort decline in earnings that coincided with cross‐cohort declines in cognitive occupational task requirements and cross‐cohort increases in manual occupational task requirements. The immigrant earnings outcomes had only a small effect on overall Canadian earnings inequality.