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Abstract
In this paper I use census data to provide an overview of gender, ethnic, and immigrant occupational segmentation in Canada’s three largest metropolitan areas. My findings corroborate the work of many other authors who have shown the pronounced split between female- and male-dominated portions of the labor market. There is also evidence of considerable ethnic and immigrant segmentation, and members of visible minority groups, especially those who are immigrants, are over-represented in poorly paid, vulnerable jobs. However, these patterns are uneven: segmentation takes different forms in the three urban areas examined here. I consider these results in light of human capital and labor market segmentation theory. Each of these approaches—particularly the latter—helps us understand the way capitalist labor markets operate, but the patterns of gender and ethnocultural participation are too complex to be adequately explained by either theory.
Notes
I thank Trevor Barnes, Don DeVoretz, David Ley, Jamie Peck, Krishna Pendakur, Geraldine Pratt, and Valerie Preston for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada (grant #410910413) for funds to purchase Statistics Canada custom tabulations and the Vancouver RIIM Project for funds to hire research assistants (Laura Beattie and Aaron James) to help compile and run the data.