“City’s immigrants make more money” as compared to Canadians.

Immigrant workers are earning more than their Canadian co-workers in Saint John. The reason for this is the comparatively low proportion of the foreign workers over there, is what Richard Campbell, director of settlement services in Saint John feels. Another important reason he points out for the fact is the influx of highly educated workers who attain very highly paid jobs due to their qualification and this pushes the numbers up. These workers come to the city through the immigrant investor’s program.

The above mentioned fact is a contradiction to the trend that predominates in Canada as the average earnings of a Canada-born worker is in most of the cases higher than that of an immigrant worker. However there are four exceptions and Saint John is one of them. In a survey conducted in year2005, it was found that the average earning of an immigrant with a university degree was $58,928 whereas the average salary of a Canadian worker was as low as $51,442. Without a degree, the average earning of an immigrant worker stands at $34,162 and that of the Canada-born worker was just $28,410. The results are exactly opposite to that of the rest of Canada where an immigrants average earning with and without a degree is $36,451 and $27,698 respectively. At the same time the average salary of a Canada born worker with and without a degree is $51,556 and $32,499 respectively.

Campbell also said that it is not that every immigrant arriving at Saint John are provided high paying jobs. Only few of really deserving talents are able to sneak through and these are skewing the numbers.

Upon the findings Ted Wannell said the results are contrary to the general trend in Canada. It was also noticed that individual average earnings increased all across Canada by 2.4percent between 2000 and 2005, while it decreased by 0.7 percent in Saint John.