Unemployment Incidence of Immigrant Men in Canada

The unemployment incidence of immigrant and non-immigrant men in Canada is compared using 11 crosssectional surveys spanning the years from 1982 to 1993. Recent immigrants are found to have higher unemployment probabilities than nonimmigrants with the difference being larger in recession years. Subsequently, measures of unemployment assimilation of immigrants are found to be sensitive to the macroeconomic conditions of the survey years. The main implication of the results for policy is that recent immigrants would benefit most from labour market programs that facilitate the transition of unemployed immigrants back to employment during recessions.