Overall, one in three Canadians has a bachelor’s degree or higher. This is thanks in particular to migrants and young adults.

The proportion of the population with a bachelor’s degree or higher has continued to rise due to the influx of highly skilled immigrants and the growing number of young adults pursuing a bachelor’s degree or higherwe can read in the Statistics Canada report.

In fact, they are the youngest immigrants to the country responsible for nearly half of the growth in the proportion of Canadians with a bachelor’s degree or higher.

According to the 2021 census, immigrants and non-permanent residents in Canada make up more than half of the working-age population with a doctorate (55.8%), master’s degree (52.2%) or degree in medicine, dentistry , veterinary medicine or optometry (50.8%) and accounted for 39.1% of bachelor graduates.

Additionally, immigrants made up nearly one in four people in Canada (23%) in 2021. This is not only the highest figure ever recorded in a Canadian census, but also the highest proportion compared to other G7 countries. Of these, 59.4% had a bachelor’s degree or higher.

But many opportunities are missed in Canada’s immigrant population and the talents of many of them remain unused : more than a quarter of all immigrants with a bachelor’s degree or higher obtained abroad pursue a profession that requires a high school diploma at most.

The overqualification of foreign-educated immigrants is a long-standing problememphasizes Statistics Canada, especially in the health sector.

” If immigrant […] could find a job in their field as quickly as the Canadian educated population, this could increase […] the potential number of registered nurses or workers in closely related professions of 27,350; and the number of physicians of 15,730. »

The strength of the higher education sector

Another important factor is the strength of the higher education sector in Canada. Almost 1 in 4 people of working age (24.6%) had a college degree or diploma or similar in 2021, a higher proportion than any other G7 country.

At university level, the number of those with a bachelor’s degree or higher among the working-age population increased by 19.1% between 2016 and 2021. 46.3%).

Despite this increase, Canada ranked mid-table for the proportion of the population with a bachelor’s degree or higher (32.9%) and ranked fourth among the G7 countries behind the United Kingdom (41.3%). United States (39.5%) and Japan (34.2%).

Ontario is the province with the highest proportion of people aged 25-64 with a university degree. Nunavut comes last.

In 2021, women were still more likely than men to have a bachelor’s degree or higher. For example, 39.7% of Canadian-born young women (aged 25-34) had a university degree in 2021, compared to 25.7% of Canadian-born young men. However, the proportion of young Canadian men with college degrees has grown faster than in the past.

Significant losses in the main business areas

However, The number of people of working age who have completed an apprenticeship in a craft is stagnating or declining in three main areas Construction trades (+0.6%), machine and repair technology (-7.8%) and precision engineering (-10.0%), as fewer young workers replace retiring baby boomers.

The vacancies in some industries related to these professions, such as B. construction and metal products, reached an all-time high in 2022we can read in the report.

More than half of the Inuit have completed high school

First Nations, Métis and Inuit are among the youngest populations in Canada, and their current and future educational pathways are having important implications for Canadian society as the country’s population ages.writes Statistics Canada.

and First Nations, Métis and Inuit face significant gaps in high school and post-secondary qualificationsbut the proportion of graduates in these populations increased between 2016 and 2021.

Education, protection during the pandemic, especially for women

Workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher had greater job security during the pandemicreads the report, partly because they were more likely to keep jobs triple protection.

Triple protection jobs refer to permanent jobs (indefinitely) and not to temporary or casual jobs; Jobs that cannot be easily automated; and workplaces that are more pandemic-resistant because they are better suited to remote work, are compatible with physical distancing, or are deemed essential by authorities.

On the one hand, wages for college-educated workers increased by an average of $1,600 from 2019 to 2020 during the pandemic. On the other hand, those of workers with less than a bachelor’s degree fell by an average of $2,040.

Since then, the situation for men with an apprenticeship degree in a craft has largely recovered from the effects of the pandemic.

In contrast, Women with an apprenticeship in a craft experienced the largest employment declines from 2016 to 2021 (-7.7 percentage points)mainly because of the field of study.

Just under half (48.0%) of working-age female apprenticeship graduates have training in hospitality, entertainment and personal services, including hairdressing […] Hair salons and restaurants were among the first businesses to close.