Occupational Skills and Labour Market Progression of Canadian Immigrant Women

Alicia Adsera and Ana Ferrer

No 1504, Working Papers from University of Waterloo, Department of Economics

Abstract: We use the confidential files of the 1991-2006 Canadian Census, combined with information from O*NET on the skill requirements of jobs, to explore whether immigrant women behave as secondary workers, remaining marginally attached to the labour market and experiencing little career progression over time. Our results show that the labour market patterns of female immigrants to Canada do not fit this profile, but rather conform to patterns recently exhibited by married native women elsewhere, with rising participation and wage progression. At best, only relatively uneducated immigrant women in unskilled occupations may fit the profile of secondary workers, with slow skill mobility and low-status job-traps. Educated immigrant women, on the other hand, experience skill assimilation over time: a reduction in physical strength and an increase in analytical skills required in their jobs relative to those of natives.

JEL-codes: F22 J01 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2015-12, Revised 2015-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://uwaterloo.ca/economics/sites/ca.economics/ ... ssion_women_2015.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wat:wpaper:1504

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Waterloo, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sherri Anne Arsenault (saarsena@uwaterloo.ca).