Annual Levels of Immigration and Immigrant Entry Earnings in Canada - ARCHIVED

The annual level of immigration is one of the most critical components of a country's immigration policy. It is difficult to directly compare the costs and benefits of changing immigration levels because immigration can serve multiple goals. However, some narrowly-defined effects can be empirically assessed. This study considers solely the potential influence of immigration levels on immigrant entry earnings.

This study focuses on the effect of immigration levels on one aspect of immigrants' labour market outcomes their entry earnings, i.e., earnings during the first two full years in Canada. An increase in labour supply - that is, a larger immigrant entering cohort - could increase competition for the types of jobs sought by entering immigrants and place downward pressure on wages for immigrants arriving in that cohort.