Who immigrants actually are: a matter of facts

Nearly one in four workers in the London Economic Region was born somewhere else. That share has been growing for decades. So has something else: the share of long-term residents who arrived as workers and are now seniors.

This is not a new pattern. It is a very old one that keeps repeating, and the newest instalment of LMLIP's Matter of Facts series makes it visible again.

Part 51 of the series, produced by the Fact Sharing Work Group, looks at age structures, household arrangements, and living situations across three groups: permanent immigrants, non-permanent residents, and Canadian-born residents. The numbers, taken together, tell a story that gets lost in most public conversation about immigration.

The age picture

Immigrants in Canada are more likely than Canadian-born residents to be of working age. About 69% fall between ages 15 and 64, compared to 64% of non-immigrants. Immigrants are also more likely to be seniors: 24% versus 16% for non-immigrants.

Both of those things are true at the same time. The working-age number and the seniors number describe different people, different cohorts at different stages of the same journey. And immigrants are less likely to be children: 7% compared to 20% of non-immigrants, which reflects a population concentrated in working and retirement ages rather than family-with-young-kids ages.

When you arrived shapes everything

The numbers shift considerably depending on when someone came to Canada.

People who arrived before 1980 are now mostly seniors: 72% of that cohort is 65 or older. They came as workers. They stayed. They grew old here. More recent arrivals are predominantly working age, as you'd expect. But the most recent newcomers show something slightly different: a higher share of children, at 24%. Families are arriving together, or family members who stayed behind are joining people who came first.

This is the life cycle the data is tracing. Arrive to work. Build stability. Bring family (or start one). Eventually grow old here. The pre-1980 cohort is just a later chapter of the same story.

It is worth pausing on that 72% figure. The seniors in our community who arrived decades ago were once the working-age newcomers in the data. They were filling jobs, paying into systems, starting families, and building lives in London and Middlesex. The workers arriving today are at the beginning of that same arc.

Non-permanent residents: a different situation

Non-permanent residents, international students, temporary workers, and others on permits, have a distinct profile from permanent immigrants.

Nearly 87% are of working age, the highest concentration of any group in the data. That makes sense given why they're here. But 38% live with non-relatives, which is notably higher than the rate for permanent immigrants, who are more likely to live with a partner or family member.

This is worth naming plainly: living in shared housing with people you're not related to is generally not a preference. It is a response to what housing costs. Non-permanent residents face the same rental market as everyone else in London, often with less income security and no long-term guarantee of staying. Their living arrangements reflect affordability pressure more than anything else.

Household structure

Among permanent immigrants, 59% live with a spouse or common-law partner. For non-immigrants, that figure is 40%.

Part of this gap comes from the age distribution; immigrants are concentrated in the working-age and senior brackets, where partnered households are more common. But it also reflects something about long-term settlement. People who have been here for years have, in many cases, built stable household lives here.

Recent arrivals show lower rates of children in the home initially, which can seem surprising given the newer-cohort data above. The explanation is staggered migration: one person arrives, gets established, and family members follow later. Newer arrivals show higher shares of children in two-parent homes, which points to that reunification happening. Older immigrants, those who have been here longest, are more likely to live alone at 25%, compared to just 4% of recent arrivals. Living alone later in life has real implications for social connection and for what kinds of community supports matter to that population.

What the pattern means

Immigration is not a static event. Someone arrives and then they live here, for years, for decades, sometimes for the rest of their lives. The pre-1980 immigrants who are now seniors in this community were once in the same working-age category as many of the people arriving today. They paid taxes, raised children, and built households in London and Middlesex. The workers and students arriving now are at the start of the same process.

Knowing this matters for planning. It helps service providers think ahead about which populations will need what. It helps community organizations see where needs are growing. And for anyone trying to understand the people around them, in their neighbourhood, their workplace, their child's school, it offers a more accurate picture than most of what the current conversation about immigration actually provides.

The data does not weigh in on policy levels or immigration targets. What it does is show who is here, how they live, and where they are in a journey that, in most cases, turns out to be a long one.

This article draws on Matter of Facts Part 51, produced by LMLIP's Fact Sharing Work Group. The full fact sheet is available on the LMLIP website.