Immigration and Wages in Canada

The Canadian media today is discussing the results of a study that Abdurrahman Aydemir (of Statistics Canada) and I wrote about the wage impact of immigration in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Here is a nice summary:

A new study suggests immigration has tended to lower wages for educated Canadians...

The Statistics Canada study, entitled "A comparative analysis of the labour market impact of international migration: Canada, Mexico, and the United States," suggests Canada has more highly skilled immigrants compared to the U.S. or Mexico.

In 2001, about four in 10 people with more than an undergraduate degree were immigrants in Canada compared to about one in five in the United States, says the study, which was released Friday.

The StatsCan study found having more highly-skilled workers in Canada has curtailed earnings growth for the most educated Canadian workers relative to the least-educated.

In the U.S., the opposite has happened. Immigrants have depressed the earnings of low-paid Americans and further widened the gap between low and high income earners....

Mexico experienced the opposite effect. The country had a 14.6 per cent loss in the size of its potential male workforce, mostly due to people moving to the U.S.; The decline in the labour market has actually increased the wages earned by those working in Mexico.

Here is the Canada Statistics press release, and here is the study itself. The article is being published in the June 2007 issue of the Journal of the European Economic Association. (Just in case you are wondering: the timing for the publicity that this paper is now receiving is completely coincidental with the ongoing debate in the United States. The paper was written about 2 years ago, and was accepted for publication about a year ago!).

Comments

[China Law Blog]

Great blog. Good to see real analysis on immigration, beyond what the mainstream media gives us.