Author: Herbert Emery, Ted McDonald, Sophia Afolabi
Year: 2026
Category:
Population Dynamics and Immigration,
Economy and Labour
Many people who move to New Brunswick from outside Canada come with high levels of education and international work experience. This study looks at how well those skills line up with the jobs immigrants hold in New Brunswick and how their outcomes compare with non‑immigrants living in the province. The analysis uses linked data from the Longitudinal Immigration Database and the 2016 Census to examine immigrants who landed in New Brunswick between 1980 and 2016.
The study finds that immigrants often have high levels of education, but their non‑Canadian training and experience are not always recognized to the same extent as Canadian credentials. As a result, immigrants may work in jobs that require less education than they have, and their earnings do not increase with education as strongly as they do for non‑immigrants. These patterns improve over time, with longer‑term immigrants showing stronger alignment between their education and occupation.
The results also show differences across landing cohorts. More recent arrivals are more likely to work in sales and service jobs, while earlier cohorts show greater alignment between their fields of study and work. However, it is possible that earlier immigrants who did not obtain work in their fields may have left the province, which would have impacted these results. Intended occupation data suggest that some immigrants do enter the fields they trained for, though broad occupational categories limit how precisely job match can be measured.
