Gender, immigrant status, and unemployment rate sensitivity during recessions

Abstract

This study examines the unemployment rates of Canadians comparing men and women, immigrants (any foreign-born Canadians) and native born Canadians to see if there are any groups that are more sensitive than their counterparts during periods of economic downturn (ie. they rise faster than their counterpart group). The results show that neither gender is particularly sensitive although unemployment gaps exist. The gap between native-born and foreign-born is persistent although the results show that it was not especially sensitive during the 2008 global financial crisis. Quarterly data from statistics Canada was used to run Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regressions in which unemployment gaps of each group (men, women and immigrants of both genders) were the dependent variables. The independent variables were GDP, GDP from industrial sectors which employs the most persons of each group and a dummy variable indicating the appearance of a major recession.