Immigrants’ labour market experiences in early twentieth century Canada

In this paper we use newly digitized complete-count micro data from the 1901, 1911 and 1921 Canadian population censuses to document foreign born assimilation into Canadian labor markets during the early twentieth century. We find that the average immigrant faced a large earnings penalty relative to their native born peers when they first entered Canadian labor markets, and this penalty was very persistent—lasting for more than 30 years. However, the assimilation experiences of the foreign born in Canada were highly variable. We document significant differences in foreign born workers’ age-earnings profiles depending on their country of origin, occupation skill level, age at arrival, arrival cohort, the region in which they live, the size of their local labor market, and the density of foreign born workers in their local labor market.