Report Reveals Immigrants Account for Most of the Growth in Ontario's Labour Force The Financial Accountability Office of Ontario (FAO) released its report on long-term trends of international immigrants in Ontario's labor market on Friday, highlighting that the province's labor force growth is increasingly driven by newcomers to the province. The analysis, titled Labor Market Outcomes of Immigrants in Ontario and its Major Cities (and based on data from Statistics Canada's 2021 Census, Demographic Estimates, Labour Force Survey, and Longitudinal Immigration Database), does not include interprovincial migrants and non-permanent residents such as temporary foreign workers and international students. Instead, to count as an international immigrant as per the report's parameters, one needs to hold permanent residence (PR) status in Canada - a definition which applies to economic immigrants, family sponsorship immigrants, refugees, and other immigrants. With immigration from these groups reaching 227,424 in 2022 and set to remain high in the near term, the employment outcomes for new PRs were claimed by the report to play a "significant role" in Ontario's economic growth. Labor Force Characteristics of Immigrants Coming to Ontario Ontario's labor force growth is increasing because of immigrants FAO found that immigration to Ontario is reliant on Ottawa's federally-set annual immigration levels, policy changes in admission programs, and Ontario's economic performance in relation to other regions of Canada. Although their numbers declined in 2020 and 2021 because of COVID-19's grip on the international movement of workers, Ontario welcomed 227,424 newcomers in 2022. This was a reflection of eased border restrictions, efforts to lessen the immigration backlogs, and bolstered immigration targets introduced by the federal government. The province's share of immigrants to Canada had also declined over the years (going from a peak of 59.6 percent in 2002 to 36.1 percent in 2017) but has since bounced back to 42.5 percent this year. Despite the aforementioned fluctuations, immigrants are accounting for a growing share of the province's labor force growth. From 2007 to 2014, they made up 39 percent of Ontario's growth in that regard, while from 2015 to 2022, they made up 63 percent of labor force increase in the province. The composition of international immigration in Ontario has shifted towards "core working-age immigrants" The age composition of international immigrants settling in Ontario every year has changed significantly over the last four decades. The share of working-age individuals out of all landed immigrants, for one, has gone up from 43.7 percent in the 1980s to 62.3 percent in 2016-2022. On the other hand, the share of the older working age groups went down from 6.6 percent in the 1980s to 4.0 percent in 2016-2022. Currently, the age composition of the recent immigrant group in Canada is significantly younger than that of the total Ontario population. "As Ontario's population continues to age," wrote the report, "immigration is expected to only partially offset the projected decline in the province's working-age population." Growing shares of recent newcomers to Canada are university-educated and possess Canadian pre-admission work and/or study experience Of the "core working age immigrants" who came to Canada between 2016 and 2021, 64.2 percent possessed a bachelor's degree or higher in 2021, when compared to 55.7 percent of immigrants who landed in 2011-2015 and 33.8 percent of all non-immigrants. When the report further dissected the group with post-secondary education, 30.2 percent of all core working-age immigrants were found to be degree, diploma, or certificate holders in a STEM field. This number outperforms the non-immigrant STEM percentage (16) by close to a two-fold margin. The following were the more popular study areas for immigrants: Business and Administration Engineering Healthcare