The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the lives of Canadian immigrants in many ways. To assess these impacts, it is important to know where Canadian immigrants stood economically right before the outbreak of the pandemic. Based on the latest available data from the 2020 Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB), the present article serves this goal by focusing on immigrant wages in recent years, including 2019. This will provide a baseline for comparison once data for 2020 are available.
Immigrants admitted to Canada in 2018 had a median wage of $31,900 in 2019. This was 4.2% higher than the median entry wage of immigrants admitted in 2017 ($30,600). In fact, immigrants admitted in 2018 had the highest median entry wage, reported one year after admission, among all immigrants admitted since 1981. Despite that, their median wage was still 17.8% lower than the 2019 median wage of the total Canadian population ($38,800).
Compared with those admitted in 2017, immigrants admitted in 2018 experienced median entry wage increases in all provinces, except Alberta, and Newfoundland and Labrador. A closer look by immigration category and pre-admission experience sheds light on differences among various groups of immigrants admitted in 2018, compared with their counterparts admitted in 2017 as well as the Canadian population in corresponding years.
Contact information
For more information, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact us (toll-free 1-800-263-1136; 514-283-8300; STATCAN.infostats-infostats.STATCAN@canada.ca) or Media Relations (613-951-4636; STATCAN.mediahotline-ligneinfomedias.STATCAN@canada.ca).