About one-quarter of immigrants who came to Canada intending to work as nurses were unemployed or in lower-skilled jobs in 2021 despite a chronic shortage of health-care workers,
Among immigrants admitted between 2010 and 2020 who were between the ages of 18 and 54 and intended to work as nurses, 63 per cent found had jobs nursing jobs in 2021, while 25 per cent were either in lower-skilled occupations or were not employed, the report found. 聽聽
Immigrants from Asia 鈥 who accounted for 84 per cent of all immigrants intending to work as nurses 鈥 had significantly lower rates of employment in nursing, compared with immigrants from the Caribbean, Central and South America, the United States and Europe.聽
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
Despite significant shortages across the country 鈥 Ontario alone needs 26,000 more registered nurses to catch up to the nurse-to-patient ratio of the rest of Canada, according to聽the Canadian Institute for Health Information聽鈥 qualified internationally educated nurses continue to face steep barriers to working in their field.
The job vacancy rate in nursing and residential-care facilities soared to 7.7 per cent in the third quarter of 2022 鈥 exacerbated by COVID-19 pandemic聽burn out and high turnover rates 鈥 and dropped to 4.6 per cent by the third quarter of 2024, the report said. This is well above the all-industry average, which fell from 5.6 to 3.2 per cent over the same period.
Because many newly arrived nurses struggle to find work in their field and have to wait for their licences, many turn to survival jobs and gig work. Financial barriers are a major factor affecting their ability to get registration and to work, according to聽聽data. Registration costs, exams and testing fees can total $3,000 at the low end, on top of immigration, housing and living expenses.
The result is that qualified and much-needed nurses who are already in Canada and are ready to work are being lost to a system that can鈥檛 afford to lose them, health experts have warned.
The Statistics Canada report highlights 鈥渢he need to enhance and expand resources, policies and programs for immigrants entering the nursing profession, particularly those without prior Canadian work experience,鈥 including efforts to address social, educational, professional and personal barriers that internationally educated nurses face.
The data shows that immigrants with Canadian work experience before being admitted as permanent residents were far more likely to end up working in nursing jobs. Their rate of alignment between intended and actual employment in nursing was 28 percentage points higher than those without such work experience.
Canadian study experience also improved results, with alignment rates about 25 percentage points higher than for those without. But much of that success was tied to the fact that many who studied in Canada had also worked here.
Canadian work experience alone explained most of the differences in alignment across immigration categories: for example, those admitted through the Canadian Experience Class, a program targeting skilled temporary foreign workers, had alignment rates 26 percentage points higher than immigrants in the Federal Skilled Worker Program, targeting skilled workers who have foreign work experience and want to become permanent residents.
Ghada Alsharif is a Toronto-based immigration and work reporter
for the Star. Reach Ghada via email: galsharif@torstar.ca.
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