Who Drives a Taxi in Canada?

Executive Summary

Although, there have been frequent media reports of immigrants with PhD and MD degrees driving a taxi in Canada, there have been few serious inquiries into this issue. Using 2006 Census data, this document provides information on immigrant and Canadian-born participation in the taxi driving occupation.

According to the 2006 Census, taxi driving has become an occupation highly concentrated with immigrants in Canada. There were over 50,000 taxi drivers in Canada; two out of four drivers were immigrants. This ratio is double that of immigrants in the Canadian population of the same age range (almost 1 in 4), thus immigrants were significantly overrepresented in the taxi driving occupation.

Taxi driving is identified as a skill level C in the National Occupational Classification, which usually requires secondary school and/or occupation-specific training. About 35% of Canadian-born taxi drivers and 53% of immigrant taxi drivers had at least some postsecondary education and may be overqualified for their job. Over-education occurs both among Canadian-born and immigrant taxi drivers, but the rate was higher among immigrants.

Taxi driving was the main job for 255 doctorate or medicine and related degree holders – 200 of which were immigrants. A further 6,040 taxi drivers (12.0%) held a bachelor’s or maste’s degree, the majority of them (80.7%) being immigrants. Among all immigrant taxi drivers, 20.2% have bachelor’s degree or better; more than 4 times the rate for Canadian-born taxi drivers (4.8%).

Immigrants from India, Pakistan, Lebanon, Haiti and Iran were significantly overrepresented among immigrant taxi drivers.

Among postsecondary-educated immigrant taxi drivers, one in three had a Canadian degree; the rest were foreign trained. Immigrant taxi drivers with a degree from India or Pakistan accounted for 18.8% and 11.8% of the total respectively. Among 4,515 taxi drivers with bachelor’s degrees, 33.4% were Canadian trained and 35.0% had degrees from India or Pakistan. Among 1,525 taxi drivers with master’s degrees, 16.1% had Canadian degrees, and 25.3% had degrees from India. Among 255 PhD and MD taxi drivers, 70.6% were foreign trained, of which 19.4% had degrees from India. There were also 75 (29.4%) Canadian trained PhD or MD taxi drivers.

The distribution pattern of field of study for postsecondary-educated taxi drivers was quite different between Canadian born and immigrants. For the Canadian born, nearly one third had a degree in architecture and related technologies, 14.5% studied business, management, marketing and related support services, and 13.5% studied personal, protective and transportation services. Among immigrants, however, the top postsecondary field was business (management, marketing and related support services), accounting for 15.9%; while architecture and related services and engineering ranked second and third, accounting for 13.7% and 13.4% respectively. The percentage of taxi drivers with engineering degrees was much higher among immigrants (13.4%) than among the Canadian born (2.2%).

Immigrants accounted for half and up to 80% of taxi drivers in 8 Canadian cities (Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa-Gatineau, Winnipeg, Montreal, and Hamilton); in Toronto and Vancouver specifically, more than 80% of taxi drivers are immigrants. Outside of these 8 cities, immigrants accounted for only 17.5% of all cab drivers.

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