International Organization for Migration (IOM)

Improving Access to Labour market Information for migrants and employers
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permitted to reside and work in Canada indefinitely, and have the right to
become citizens after three years of residency.
• Over the past three decades, the most important source countries for immigrants
to Canada have shifted from Western European countries to developing
countries, such as the Philippines, China and India. The shift in source countries
means language instruction is a more important part of Canada’s settlement
programming.
• Employers, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), have
found that traditional methods of recruiting talent, including public
advertising and informal referrals from contacts, often fail to connect them to
immigrants. Research has shown that SMEs have more success in attracting
immigrants through non-traditional methods, including advertising in ethnic
media and seeking referrals from immigrant-serving organizations. In recent
years, immigrant-serving organizations have also developed a large number
of programmes across Canada to facilitate hiring of immigrants by SMEs.
• The most significant obstacles to success in the labour market as perceived
by recent immigrants are language barriers, a lack of Canadian work
experience, and difficulty receiving recognition for foreign credentials,
particularly in professions regulated by sub-national governments to ensure
public safety. Research has shown that there is a significant gap in the labour
market outcomes, both for unemployment rates and earnings, between recent
university-educated immigrants and similarly educated domestic-born
workers. Access to labour market information is a comparably small factor
and not a major barrier to the labour market integration of immigrants.
However, improved LMI certainly alleviate more fundamental barriers and
improve labour market matching.
• Multi-stakeholder partnerships between immigrant-serving organizations
and all levels of government have become an integral part of Canada’s system
of delivering labour market information and providing services to newcomers
to Canada.
• Outreach programmes that provide pre-departure information and instruction
to immigrants have proven to be effective at preparing immigrants to integrate
into the Canadian labour market. This has included providing orientation
sessions and individual counselling sessions for those approved for permanent
residence months in advance of their landing in Canada, while they are still in
their source country.
• We identify five best practices from the Canadian experience with respect to
labour market information for immigrants and employers: i) create a national
organization to more effectively provide information to recent immigrants
about the steps necessary to work in regulated occupations; ii) maximize
the number of single-points-of-contact in Canada (also referred to in the
migration literature as one-stop-shops) for services directed at employers