Union Coverage and Immigrant-Native Wage Differentials in Canada
摘要
This study examines whether immigrant-native wage differentials vary between union-covered and non-unionized employment in Canada. Using pooled monthly Labour Force Survey public-use microdata for 2021–2025, the analysis focuses on paid employees aged 25 to 64 and estimates weighted log-hourly wage models with province-year clustered standard errors. It supplements the regression evidence with Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions, year-specific models, alternative clustering, functional-form checks, inverse-probability weighting, Oster sensitivity analysis and post-2022 robustness. The findings show that immigrants earn less than comparable non-immigrants, with larger wage penalties for recent immigrants than for established immigrants. Union-covered jobs are associated with higher wages overall, but immigrants receive a smaller union wage premium than comparable non-immigrants. The triple-interaction results further show that immigrant women occupy the lowest predicted wage positions, particularly outside union-covered employment. Decomposition evidence indicates that the immigrant-native wage gap is concentrated more in differential returns to observed characteristics than in differences in the characteristics themselves, and that the gap is wider in unionized than in non-unionized employment. Overall, union coverage remains an important wage-setting institution, but it does not eliminate immigrant wage disadvantage in the Canadian labour market.