Essential but Excluded: COVID-19, Recovery, and Associated Labour Market Inequalities for Filipino Immigrants in Canada

Filipino immigrants play a central role in Canada’s essential workforce, particularly in health care, caregiving, and service sectors. This paper examines how their labour market outcomes have changed since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on employment, exposure to precarious work, and earnings. Using Labour Force Survey data from 2016 to 2025, we compare Filipino immigrants with other major immigrant groups, using Canadian-born workers as a benchmark. The results point to a consistent pattern: since the start of the pandemic, Filipino immigrants became more likely to experience unemployment and to be concentrated in precarious forms of work. At the same time, their earnings did not keep pace with those of Canadian-born workers, resulting in a widening gap. Compared to other immigrant groups, Filipino immigrants stand out as facing a combination of worsening job conditions and slower earnings growth. These findings suggest that the pandemic reshaped the labour market in ways that left Filipino immigrants increasingly vulnerable, despite their central role in essential work. The paper concludes by discussing policy measures that could better protect immigrant workers in future periods of economic disruption.