Economic and Social Reports, February 2025

There are four new articles available in today's release of Economic and Social Reports.

Canadian workplaces continue to move away from routine, manual jobs

New developments in automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are increasing the pace of technological advancement. There are concerns that the speed of these changes may alter or even replace certain jobs.

The article "The changing nature of work in Canada: 1987 to 2024," shows that from 2022 to 2024, the share of non-routine, cognitive jobs in the Canadian economy continued to increase, and the share of routine, manual jobs in the Canadian economy continued to decrease. These are both long-term trends that have been observed since the 1980s, and are consistent with the increasing use of automation in the workplace. Although AI technology has improved substantially in recent years, its adoption in the Canadian workplace remains fairly limited.

These trends were observed for both men and women at the national level, as well as for men in all provinces and women in all provinces except Alberta (where the share of women employed in routine, manual jobs increased somewhat from 2022 to 2024). Nationally, the share of non-routine, cognitive jobs in the Canadian economy increased by 10.7 percentage points (for men) and by 15.6 percentage points (for women) over the entire period (1987 to 2024). In contrast, the share of routine, manual jobs in the Canadian economy decreased by 11.9 percentage points (for men) and by 4.2 percentage points (for women) over the same period.

It will be important to closely monitor future developments in the Canadian job landscape as advanced technologies such as AI continue to evolve and be adopted in the workplace.

More than half of data scientists in Canada are immigrants

Businesses are increasingly employing data scientists to analyze data on customer preferences to inform decisions about products and marketing. This growing demand has made immigrants a crucial source of labour for data science in Canada. The article "A comparison of immigrant and Canadian-born data scientists: Sociodemographic characteristics and earnings" examines differences between immigrants and the Canadian-born employed in data science.

Based on data from the 2021 Census, immigrants made up nearly 60% of the 12,200 data scientists aged 20 to 64 with earnings, compared with 28% of earners across all occupations. Immigrant data scientists had higher levels of education than their Canadian-born counterparts. About 78% of new immigrants (in Canada for 5 years or less) held a degree above a bachelor's, followed by 75% for recent immigrants (6 to 10 years in Canada), compared with about 40% of Canadian-born data scientists.

Among data scientists, new immigrants had earnings comparable to Canadian-born workers, while recent immigrants earned 8% more. After adjusting for differences in sociodemographic factors, the earnings gap among data scientists was small for new immigrants (-9%) and not statistically significant for recent immigrants. In contrast, among all workers, the adjusted earnings gap was larger—new immigrants earned 27% less than Canadian-born workers, and recent immigrants earned 19% less.

These findings suggest that strong labour demand in the data science field plays a key role in narrowing the earnings gap between immigrants and Canadian-born workers.

Immigrant-owned businesses are less productive but pay higher taxes compared with Canadian-born owned businesses

Canada has one of the highest shares of immigrants among developed countries, making it crucial to understand the economic impact of immigrant-owned businesses. The article "Economic and fiscal performance of immigrant-owned firms in Canada," looks at how these firms compare to those owned by Canadian-born individuals in terms of labour productivity and fiscal contribution.

Firms that are majority-owned by immigrants are generally less productive than their Canadian-born counterparts, after adjusting for differences across firm characteristics. For firms with fewer than five employees, immigrant-owned firms were 8.8% less productive, and this gap grew to 20.9% for firms with 100 or more employees. For firms with immigrant minority ownership, productivity was similar to Canadian-born-owned firms, but only for those with fewer than 100 employees. For larger firms, they were significantly less productive.

In terms of fiscal contributions, immigrant majority-owned firms paid higher net taxes per employee compared to Canadian-born-owned firms. Immigrant minority-owned firms contributed even more. Factors such as education, business experience, and language proficiency at the time of arrival for immigrant owners strongly influenced the productivity and fiscal performance of immigrant-owned businesses. These characteristics were especially important for small and medium firms, with education emerging as the most important predictor of productivity across all firm sizes.

More than half of those with severe disabilities do not take advantage of financial supports

While there are financial supports for Canadians with disabilities in the form of tax credits and disability benefits, there is a lack of knowledge on whether those who may be eligible make use of them. The study "Uptake of the disability tax credit and the Canada Pension Plan or Quebec Pension Plan disability benefits among persons with disabilities in Canada" addresses this knowledge gap by looking at persons with disabilities identified in a national survey who may be eligible to claim the disability tax credit (DTC) or receive the Canada Pension Plan or Quebec Pension Plan (CPP/QPP) disability benefits.

The study found that approximately 13% of persons with disabilities claimed the DTC, and about 9% received CPP/QPP disability benefits, with uptake varying by disability severity and type. As expected, persons with more severe disabilities were more likely to access these supports. However, among those with very severe disabilities, about 60% did not take up these supports, and about 36% applied for a DTC certificate. Persons with developmental disabilities had the highest uptake of the DTC, while those with dexterity disabilities had the highest uptake of the CPP/QPP disability benefits.

This study highlighted the usefulness of integrating survey and administrative data to identify persons with disabilities who may be eligible for disability supports. By identifying specific groups that vary in their uptake of the DTC and the CPP/QPP disability benefits, the results of this study address knowledge gaps related to poverty reduction for a specific hard-to-reach population.