CANADIAN IMMIGRATION NEWS

Growing Canadian job market opens as people retire

Friday, 7 March 2008

Immigration to Canada is becoming even more popular as the country boasts the fastest-growing employment rate of any G7 nation.

A report by Statistics Canada indicates that strong employment growth has continued since 2006, a fact reflected in a jobless rate that now stands at a modern-day low of 5.8%.

Yet, despite Canada posting the strongest employment growth of the seven major industrial economies between 2001 and 2006, increasing at an average annual rate of 1.7%, its workforce is going to need new blood soon.

A large part of Canada's workforce is preparing for retirement, calling for more workers to take their places. Hopes are that immigration will ensure that this can be done.

Currently, the median age of Canada's workforce is past 40 - a first time on this census. It now sits at 41.2 years. In fact, in 2006, 15.3% of the workforce was aged 55 and older. This is up from 11.7% from five years earlier.

Experts attribute this to the aging of the baby boomers and to older workers increasingly staying in the labour force.

Geoff Bowlby, director of the agency's Labour Statistics Division, warns that it's inevitable that at some point soon there's going to be a big onslaught of retirements of baby boomers that should continue for about 20 years.

The generation that will follow them is a lot smaller, he says, referring to a demographic process that has generated widespread concern about future labour shortages.

It is hoped that immigration would remedy this crisis looming in the future.

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