Skilled immigrant labour: country of origin and the occupational locations of male engineers

Do high skill immigrant workers find employment corresponding to their training? Using unpublished data from the 1996 census, we examine the occupational locations of men age 30-54 who have a university degree with a major in engineering. We focus on three groups: Canadian born, foreign born who immigrated before age 19 and the foreign-born arriving after age 27, arguing that the first two are most likely to be educated in Canada whereas the last group is not. We find birth place differences in the percentages who are working in managerial, engineering, technical and all other occupations, with differences being most pronounced for those immigrating after age 27. Multinomial logit analysis confirms that these differences cannot be attributed to differences in measured human capital stock. Accreditation requirements are one likely explanation, particularly for those who have received training outside Canada.