December 1, 2025 — Despite a shortage in nurses, Canada is not fully integrating immigrant nurses into the healthcare system.
Even in the face of thousands of job vacancies, Filipino and other internationally educated immigrant women nurses are being prevented from working in their professions because of regulatory barriers, according to a new study.
“This underutilization of their human capital is an issue for the economic integration of immigrants and also represents lost productivity for the Canadian economy,” the paper stated.
Released on October 22, 2025, the study is titled “Skill underutilization among immigrant women with a nursing education”. It was authored by Christoph Schimmele and Feng Hou, both with Statistics Canada.
The study used 2021 Census data, and focused on immigrant women aged 25 to 64 years, who were educated as licensed practical nurses, registered nurses or nurse practitioners.
“Among those who were employed, large percentages of immigrant women with a nursing education from a foreign school did not have a health occupation,” the study noted about internationally educated nurses (IENs).
Among Filipino women nurses who were educated outside Canada, 72 percent were employed in a health profession.
However, only 38.2 percent of IENs with Filipino immigrant backgrounds were employed in nursing professions that match their qualifications.
“Nearly three-quarters (72%) of IENs from the Filipino population group had a health occupation, but less than two-fifths (38%) of them had a job that matched their educational attainment. Thus, about one-third of them had health jobs that did not fully utilize their nursing education,” the study noted.
Referring to immigrant women nurses overall, the paper stated that even when they are employed in a health occupation, IENs were “often employed in jobs that underutilized their nursing education, such as those who were educated to be registered nurses but were employed as practical nurses, orderlies or caregivers”.
“One-third to two-thirds of IENs had a job that matched their educational attainment. Hence, IENs generally experienced a great disadvantage in getting a suitable job in the nursing profession…,” the paper said.
The situation is different for immigrant women who got their nursing education in Canada.
“Many Canadian-educated immigrant women arrived in Canada as children or adolescents, while foreign-educated immigrant women arrived as adults. The barriers to employment in the nursing profession that foreign-educated immigrant women experience, such as non-recognition of nursing credentials and language proficiency, are not relevant to immigrants who received their nursing education, and often their primary and secondary education, in Canada.”
The study noted that most immigrant women with a nursing education from a Canadian school had a health occupation, with percentages ranging from 86 percent to 93 percent.
“Across population groups, about four-fifths or more had health occupations that matched their educational attainment,” the paper stated.
For Filipino immigrant women who were educated as nurses in Canada, 90.3 percent were employed in a health profession in 2021.
Moreover, 82.9 percent of these Filipino women nurses in 2021 worked in jobs that matched their qualifications.
“The employment outcomes of immigrant women who received their nursing education in Canada resembled the outcomes of their Canadian-born counterparts more closely than those of foreign-educated immigrants.
“This is an important finding because it indicates that place of education matters more than immigrant status in terms of the employment of immigrant women in the nursing profession.”
The paper noted that demand for nurses in Canada has grown faster than the supply of people with a nursing education.
To illustrate, there were 21,000 job vacancies for registered nurses and 10,000 vacancies for licensed practical nurses in the first quarter of 2025.
Internationally educated nurses are a “potential solution for easing these shortages”.
“However, many IENs are on the sidelines instead of working as nurses because of regulatory difficulties in recertifying to work in the nursing profession in Canada.”
The study also noted that immigrant women in 2021 accounted for one-quarter (27 percent) of the total supply of working-age Canadians with a nursing education.
In particular, there were 508,000 people in Canada in 2021 who were aged 25 to 64 years and had a nursing education from either a Canadian or a foreign school.
“Improvement in skill utilization is essential, because immigrants who have to settle for low-skill jobs can experience de-skilling overtime, thus entrapping them in a low socioeconomic position,” the study concluded.
“Moreover, their integration into the nursing workforce can ease the nursing shortage and reduce the burdensome workloads that are prevalent among nurses.”
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