Glass ceiling for immigrants | What is the immigrant glass ceiling - YouTube

welcome back to my channel the best place for  millennial professionals who feel stuck in  

their careers to find their dream careers in this  video i'm going to talk about the glass ceiling  

now the glass ceiling is largely used to describe  the predicament women face in the workplace but it  

also applies to other groups such as immigrants  and ethnic minorities as well so in this video  

i'm going to dive into the reasons why the glass  ceiling exists for immigrants and also what can  

be done about it be sure to stick around until  the end to learn how immigrants can find success  

in the corporate world in the west also make sure  you subscribe and click the notification bell to  

receive regular updates on all things related  to bringing positive change to your career  

hi i'm dr jon tam and i'm passionate about  helping ambitious millennial professionals  

build their dream careers so without further ado  let's talk about the immigrant glass ceiling and  

its impact upon immigrants now my first point  is that there's a very clear economic penalty  

only approximately six percent of the executives  in the greater toronto area are immigrants with  

undergrads from non-english speaking countries  and so when we're talking about non-english  

speaking countries there is a clear difference  between the us canada uk and australia in terms  

of minorities of undergrads from those countries  because they're fundamentally treated differently  

since their obstacles are also quite different  now between the ages 35 to 44 the income disparity  

between immigrants and their canadian counterparts  is approximately 25 percent by 45 to 54 years old  

their income is almost 40 percent less this  essentially becomes a double jeopardy if the  

immigrant is a female so essentially they're  earning 70 to 75 cents to the dollar of the  

average canadian male now this type of information  has been well documented by professor reza hazmat  

at the university of alberta who is my friend and  he's also the author of the book ethnic penalty  

that studies the problems immigrants face in the  workplace in terms of the economic disparity and  

also the types of discrimination and the obstacles  they face however before you think this video is  

going to be a long schpiel about discrimination  in the workplace i do want to emphasize that  

these are mechanisms in society so we're not  talking about only american society or canadian  

society we're also talking about you know what  ethnic minorities may face in china for example  

right so if you are a white person that goes to  china you too will earn 75 cents to a dollar of  

a chinese person because of the same mechanisms  right if you're a white person moving to africa  

and you're working in an african workplace you too  will face those obstacles so these are universal  

mechanisms i'm not going to dismiss it as language  discrimination or racial discrimination even  

though those do exist there are other forces in  play so in terms of income there's approximately  

a 16 000 gap between european earners and  non-european earners and visible minorities  

continue to be over-represented in the low-wage  occupations and underrepresented in managerial  

positions so essentially if you're to take a quick  summary on this point immigrants are getting paid  

less approximately 75 cents to a dollar now  my second point is there's also an employment  

penalty and the employment penalty is in terms  of the labor force participation rates right so  

european canadians are 83 percent employed versus  non-europeans who are approximately 76.5 percent  

in terms of their labor force participation rate  and this gap may be explained by ethnics pursuing  

more education for a higher payout or could  also be co-explained by frustration or just  

quitting right within the at-risk groups which  is approximately four percent of the toronto  

population or 183 000 people there's a higher  undergraduate attainment at 21.8 percent and the  

graduate attainment is at 8.4 but at the same  time they only have approximately 70 percent  

in terms of their labor market participation  at the same time they have a very alarming 10.5  

unemployment rate so only 0.8 percent are employed  as high level managers only 11.2 are employed as  

mid-level managers and only 15.1 percent are  categorized as professionals their mean salary  

is thirty four thousand dollars and it's nearly  twenty thousand dollars less than europeans  

all these stats are actually after removing the  chinese because a chinese group in toronto would  

actually skew the data further negatively  since they have a high participation rate  

in the secondary labor market with low-paying jobs  right and secondary labor market are jobs that are  

part-time contract based and basically leads to  underemployment so in other words those numbers  

are actually much worse than they appear  by the way the chinese have their own term  

called the bamboo ceiling which i'll talk about  in my future video so make sure you subscribe  

and click the notification bell for when it  comes out so actually if all those numbers went  

over your head the main takeaway is that ethnic  minorities and immigrants actually have a lower  

labor force participation rate which means they  are less employed they are more underemployed  

and they are paid less and they they're  also in managerial and leadership positions  

far less there are numerous explanations for  this gap but discrimination and language barriers  

cannot account for all this and there are other  more probable reasons which i'll discuss in the  

next video on the glass ceiling so make sure  you subscribe and click the notification bell  

for when it comes out do you find these stats  alarming let me know in the comments below now  

my third point is that certain immigrants are  hit more than others and that's just simply the  

immigrant reality it's worse than it looks because  we are only measuring those in the primary labor  

market so those are you know you could call it the  mainstream workforce or whatnot when we look at  

immigrants there are typically four types of  immigrants there's the family class there's the  

economic immigrants which would include business  class which would be the entrepreneurs and  

investors and also the professional class which  would be immigrant or skilled workers the third  

class is the humanitarian and compassionate class  and then the fourth class is the refugee class now  

investment immigrants tend to have the capital  to live very transnational lives so they don't  

even have to stick around or even work their means  of income generation is also mostly in investments  

and it's difficult to track given their  transnational portfolio and ties refugees on the  

other hand get stuck in the secondary labor market  and black markets right and those are the places  

that systematically keep you in your place because  of the poverty and the lack of opportunities for  

advancement now but for the professional class it's  harder for them to pack up their bags and leave  

they are skilled at what they do they have a lot  of hard skills but they also typically enter the  

workforce at entry level jobs despite working  at a mid to high level job in their country of  

origin so essentially when they come to the west  they are taking a hit and there is almost always  

an immigration penalty and this has been well  documented there are numerous reasons for this one  

common reason is that they lack the network and  know how to get into the primary labor market or  

mainstream work but they also run the risk of  being overqualified for low-level jobs and if  

they take it they end up being underemployed which  is defined in the merriam-webster dictionary as  

the condition in which people in the labor  force are employed at less than full-time or  

regular jobs or jobs inadequate with respect in  terms of their training or their economic needs  

as a result many immigrants actually turn to  entrepreneurship or starting a small business  

which has risks of its own in terms of survival  and ironically these ethnic businesses often hire  

in their ethnic communities and reinforce their  own ethnic hiring cycle and research shows that  

there is greater implicit understanding of  work ethics and cultural values resulting  

in greater trust so basically a lot of  immigrants come over to north america  

and because they lack the social capital  to break into the primary labor market they  

then create their own business and hire others  who are similar to themselves and as a result  

a lot of ethnically based businesses are formed  and they stay ethnically based because that's  

what the trust is right it's the cultural norms  it's everyone agreeing to certain values and also  

the very practical part of speaking a  certain language and you know just being  

able to function in that language now for jobs in  a primary labor market companies hire for skills  

fit and experience in different orders right  some companies may prioritize one over the other  

immigrants may eventually enter the primary labor  force but at the same time they will generally  

face the next problem and the next problem is they  will struggle to get promoted to the management  

level because they are perceived to lack the right  soft skills and i talked about this at length with  

professor reza hasmath in this card above and so  check it out if you are interested now basically  

though the baseline is this the higher you go the  more important soft skills and trust becomes which  

brings us to our fourth point which is immigrants  typically face underemployment and over education  

and oftentimes immigrants would think that in  order to overcome this they need to actually  

get more credentials and get more education to  compensate for this now whether or not going  

back to school will actually be helpful actually  doesn't solve the problem that i presented in my  

last point right it's basically the lack of social  capital the lack of networks and the lack of soft  

skills in the west that really makes it difficult  for immigrants to climb that ladder and so  

interestingly enough this whole ethic of getting  more education is passed on to the next generation  

interestingly enough the second generation  generally does not like working in the ethnic  

job market however ironically sometimes mature  ethnic job markets actually have higher economic  

returns than the primary labor market as we are  finding now with ethnic groups in north america  

such as the chinese or korean communities  right it's actually possible to make more money  

in those ethnic communities than in the primary  labor market and ethnic and immigrant bubbles  

aren't actually anything new as we found with  immigrants such as the jewish community or the  

white europeans in the irish and italians and  germans back in the 50s and 60s and to some of  

the immigrant glass ceiling immigrants typically  face an economic penalty they face an employment  

penalty they face a situation where certain groups  are hurt more than others and they also typically  

face underemployment and over education as well  in my next video i'm going to provide solutions  

for immigrants on how to break the glass ceiling  so make sure you subscribe and click the notification  

bell for when it comes out but i'll give you  a quick teaser here and the answer involves  

developing soft skills that are suited for your  personality and so if you want to understand your  

personality the best standard out there is the big  five personality traits and you can take a free  

quick and accurate one in the comments below also  make sure to join my facebook group career change  

advice to be in a community of people interested  in making their careers work for them rather than  

the other way around also leave a comment below  and let me know your thoughts about this video  

don't forget to give it a like and share it with  your network if you found this to be valuable  

i hope to see you in the next video where i teach  you how to smash the immigrant glass ceiling