Immigrant Women: Powering London's Economic Engine
Over the past few years, the Canadian government has been highlighting the importance of immigration for the economic future of the country.
In fact, just last month Immigration Minister Sean Fraser underscored that point when he said immigration was the only way for Canada to address the challenges posed by an aging population and workforce.
“The reality is if we don’t bring more families and working-age people into this country, the economic conversations we’re going to be having a generation from now will not just be about labour shortages,” he said in an interview with the Prince George Post in Prince George, B.C.
“It’s going to be about whether we can afford public services, schools, hospitals and roads.”
It’s a reality that is also playing out in the London region, where nearly two-thirds of London-area employers said in a 2022 survey by the Elgin Middlesex Oxford Workforce Planning and Development Board, a workforce development agency, that they are having a hard time finding enough workers to fill available jobs.
That’s why, to honour Mother’s Day this month, the London & Middlesex Local Immigration Partnership examined immigrant women’s contribution to the local workforce.
Source: Statistics Canada. Table 98-10-0134-01 Census family status and household living arrangements, household type
of person, age group and gender: Canada, provinces and territories, census metropolitan areas and census agglomerations
DOI: https://doi.org/10.25318/9810013401-eng
In general terms, 431,255 people were living in the London Census Metropolitan Area, which includes portions of Elgin and Middlesex counties, according to 2021 census figures from Statistics Canada.
The region’s population was divided between 127,655 men+, 143,760 women+ and 159,840 children, Statistics Canada reported.*
In total, there were also 64,110 immigrants (34,475 men+ and 29,635 women+) between the ages of 25 and 64, which are generally considered people’s working years, and who have worked at some point in time between January 2020 and May 2021.
Source: Statistics Canada. Table 98-10-0454-01 Occupation (STEM and non-STEM) by visible minority, generation status,
age and gender: Canada, provinces and territories, census metropolitan areas and census agglomerations with parts
DOI: https://doi.org/10.25318/9810045401-eng
When looking closer at their occupations, Immigrant women (28.7 per cent) predominantly worked in the sales and services sector.
About 16 per cent of immigrant women worked in jobs related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), slightly below men’s 19.3 per cent.
However, a higher percentage of immigrant women (19.2 per cent) work in business, finance, and administration compared to immigrant men (8.5 per cent).
This was also true in education, law, social, community and government services occupations (16.1 per cent vs. 7.5 per cent) and health-care related careers (7.6 per cent vs. 1.6 per cent).
These are some sectors where employers are also having a hard time finding employees.
The London Free Press, for instance, reported in April that London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC), Southwestern Ontario's largest hospital, had about 500 unfilled nursing positions. As the figures show, tapping on the potential of immigrants overall, but most specifically immigrant women, can help alleviate some of those challenges.
LMLIP Fact Sharing Work Group
*To protect the confidentiality of responses, individuals in the category “non-binary persons” are distributed into the other two gender categories and are denoted by the “+” symbol.