Work First and Immigrants

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Work First and Immigrants

• Welfare reform and post-welfare employment among
  immigrants in Toronto

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The SANE (Social Assistance in the New Economy)
Project

• Overall purpose to examine the impacts of welfare
  reform in the context of the globalized economy
• Projects
• Ongoing panel of social assistance recipients
  drawn in 2001 and interviewed annually
• Analysis of wage and hours mobility using the
  Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID)
• Examination of the implementation of provincial
  employment programs at a local level
• Secondary analysis of a survey of welfare leavers
  conducted by the City of Toronto in 2001 and
• Second phase examines health and hunger issues
  arising among the social assistance population

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Background

• A growing literature has documented the economic
  disadvantage of immigrants in Canada (Picot and
  Sweetman, 2005 Reitz, 2005 Li, 2003 Hum and
  Simpson, 2002).
• Higher rates of unemployment, lower earnings, a
  gap between the earnings of immigrants and
  native-born Canadians, a higher incidence of
  part-time hours or temporary employment, and
  poorer working conditions (Reitz, 1998).
• The earnings gap between immigrants and
  native-born Canadians is closing more slowly than
  in the past.
• Recent groups of immigrants have had greater
  difficulty entering the workforce.
• Poverty rates among recent immigrants have risen.
• We examine the experiences of immigrants in
  Toronto as they pass through, and leave, Ontario
  Works (OW), a typical work-first program in
  which priority is placed upon rapid labour force
  attachment through mandatory participation in job
  search and related activities.

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Explanations

• Economic disadvantage among immigrants is common,
  and documented across countries as divergent as
  Australia, Germany, Sweden and the United States.
• Diminshed returns for immigrants human capital
  (Kazemipur and Halli 2001, Alboim, Finnie and
  Meng 2005)
• Increased importance of soft skills in the new
  economy favour native-born (Bevelander 1999)
• Picot and Sweetman (2005) identified three causal
  factors changes in the characteristics of
  immigrants (source regions, rising education),
  decreasing returns to foreign work experience and
  a decline in outcomes for all new entrants to the
  labour market.

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Institutional impacts on immigrant economic
success

• Differing institutional structures immigration
  policy, labour markets and the welfare state -
  form components of an inter-related institutional
  system that influence the economic success of
  immigrants and shape these outcomes (Reitz,
  1998).
• Welfare states differ systematically according to
  national priorities and values liberal,
  conservative and social democratic
  (Esping-Andersen, 1990)
• Values and priorities in one institutional sector
  are likely at play in other sectors as well,
  suggesting the possibility of investigating the
  shape of particular welfare state institutions
  and their impact on immigrant economic
  circumstances.
• Differences in immigration policy, but especially
  labour market institutions and social welfare
  systems, might manifest themselves as differences
  in earnings and unemployment, subsequent risks of
  unemployment and the consequent need for social
  assistance among different groups (for example
  immigrants versus native born).

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Work First

• Individualistic explanations of poverty and
  unemployment
• Focus on individual characteristics/shortcomings
  such as education or work experience, and/or
  moral failings such as dependency or poor work
  habits
• Programs stress the shortest route to paid
  employment and rely on low-cost and short-term
  interventions to compel participants to enter the
  labour market as rapidly as possible

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Demographic characteristics

• Toronto Social Services survey of welfare leavers
  - 2001
• Immigrants were slightly older (38 versus 35).
  This may include additional human capital in the
  form of work experience as age and work9
  experience tend to be highly correlated.
  However, the survey did not ask about prior work
  experience, the other important aspect of human
  capital.
• Immigrants were more likely to be in couple
  families and couple families with children.
• There was a marked difference in education
  immigrants were more likely to have a completed
  post-secondary education (34 versus 21)

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Policy Issues

• Immigrants face different barriers from others
  considered hard to serve
• Barriers are not addressed by Work First
• Labour force attachment, community participation
  and work experience

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Beyond Work First

• Building survival systems identifying and meeting
  immediate client needs by improving services
  within existing welfare systems
• Building support systems, which implements
  policies to improve recipients links and supports
  to entry to the permanent labour market and
• Building sustainable systems which attempts to
  make work pay and ensure sustainable futures in
  the labour market.