The Differential Impact of COVID-19 on Labour Market Outcomes of Immigrants in Canada

Based on Canadian Labour Force Survey data, we estimate the differential effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on seven labour market outcomes, and separate between recent and established immigrants relative to domestic-born Canadians. We also use Recentered Influence Function (RIF) unconditional quantile regressions to estimate the differential effects across the distribution of outcomes. We find that the pandemic had an adverse effect on the labour market outcomes for all workers, and that the adverse effects were generally larger for immigrants and especially recent immigrants as well as for immigrants at the bottom of the outcome distributions. The adverse effects were generally larger at the earliest waves of the pandemic, and for recent immigrants who were female, less educated, and those with child responsibilities, and for jobs at greater risk of contact with the pandemic.