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TL;DR:
Among core-aged workers with postsecondary credentials, 30.7% of recent immigrants said they had more skills than their job required, versus 29.1% of Canadian-born workers, a gap of just 1.6 points.
On overqualification by education, the gap was 13.5 points: 32.6% of recent immigrants versus 19.1% of Canadian-born workers.
42.5% of recent working-age immigrants who were not employed on arrival found work or started a business within three months.
But 31.7% reported difficulty finding a first job, citing lack of Canadian experience (42.2%), no local connections (38.3%), and foreign experience not accepted (34.6%).
Overqualification rates fall with time in Canada, from 32.6% for recent immigrants to 22.4% for those admitted more than 10 years earlier, but remain above the 19.1% rate for Canadian-born workers.
Recent immigrants to Canada report almost the same level of surplus skills as Canadian-born workers. But they are far more likely to hold jobs beneath their education. That gap is a key finding in two studies released by Statistics Canada on April 7, 2026.
Among core-aged workers (25 to 54) with postsecondary credentials, 30.7% of recent immigrants said they had more skills than their job required. For Canadian-born workers, it was 29.1%, a difference of 1.6 percentage points.
On overqualification by education, the spread was 13.5 points: 32.6% of recent immigrants versus 19.1% of Canadian-born workers. On holding a job that usually requires high school or less, the gap was 12.4 points: 25.6% versus 13.2%.
If immigrants and Canadian-born workers feel similarly over-skilled, but immigrants are far more likely to be over-educated for their roles, the bottleneck is not what newcomers bring. It is how the labour market sorts them.
The barriers point to employer screening
A separate Statistics Canada study released the same day surveyed recent working-age immigrants about obstacles to finding a first job. Among the 31.7% who reported difficulty, the top barriers were:
Not having enough job experience or references in Canada: 42.2%
No connections in the job market: 38.3%
Job experience from outside Canada not accepted: 34.6%
The top barriers cited — Canadian experience, local connections, and foreign experience not accepted — all relate to employer screening rather than to the qualifications immigrants hold.
New immigrants are entering the labour market faster
The same study found that 42.5% of recent working-age immigrants who were not employed on arrival had found work or started a business within three months. That is higher than the 31.3% rate for immigrants who arrived 10 to 15 years earlier, suggesting newer cohorts are entering the labour market faster.
The overqualification rate for recent immigrants, at 32.6%, sits well above the 24.6% rate for immigrants who have been in Canada five to 10 years, and the 22.4% rate for those with more than 10 years since admission. The gradient suggests time in Canada does narrow the gap, but doesn’t close it entirely.
What the data does not cover
The mismatch figures are limited to core-aged workers with postsecondary credentials. The labour-market entry data cover recent working-age immigrants aged 25 to 54 who arrived within five years. Neither study captures all immigrants, all occupations, or regional variation.
Statistics Canada collected the data in September 2024 and September 2025, a period of elevated immigration and changing labour-market conditions. The agency said the pattern of decreasing mismatch over time aligns with earlier research on immigrant labour-market integration.
The data shows near-parity on skills alongside a 13.5 point gap in education match.
