Immigrant earnings and labour-market positioning in a transforming digital labour market: evidence from Canada, 1971–2021

Purpose This paper examines immigrant earnings trajectories and labour-market positioning across industries and employment arrangements in six Canadian provinces, as well as how industry patterns relate to digital intensity, telework feasibility, and productivity-relevant allocation. Design/methodology/approach Canadian Census microdata, 1971–2021 compare immigrant and native-born earnings across ten arrival cohorts by gender and age at arrival. For two recent cohorts, an earnings-based positioning measure combines industry mean annual earnings with full-time or part-time status multinomial-logit average marginal effects are estimated. The study also maps 2021 industry employment shares to external digital-intensity and telework-feasibility classifications. Individual productivity, artificial-intelligence (AI) adoption, Information and Communications Technology use, and remote-work uptake are not observed. Findings Entry earnings gaps and incomplete cohort convergence persist, especially among women and recent cohorts. Across the two positioning cohorts, immigrants are less likely than comparable native-born workers to hold full-time jobs in higher-earnings industries; gaps vary by source region and do not uniformly narrow. Education is associated with better positioning but does not eliminate gaps Immigrant employment is more concentrated in many digitally intensive categories but less concentrated in several higher-earnings, high-telework-feasibility industries digital intensity is not systematically related to immigrant employment shares. Originality/value The paper combines five decades of earnings evidence across ten cohorts with a two-cohort positioning measure and descriptive digital and telework mapping. It complements individual-level careers research by identifying structural differences in opportunity access with possible, unmeasured productivity implications.