Recent immigrants to Canada with a university education are more than four times more likely to be unemployed than Canadian-born workers with a university degree, a new study suggests.

The study, released Tuesday by Community Foundations of Canada, found that in 2009 university-educated immigrants who had been in Canada fewer than five years had an unemployment rate of 13.9 per cent, compared with 3.4 per cent for their Canadian-born counterparts.

It also found that unemployment rates were much closer for recent immigrants without a degree, diploma or certificate and Canadian-born workers with the same education — 19.5 per cent versus 15.9 per cent.

"It is disheartening to see such a significant gap between well-educated newcomers. Their experience in our labour market is dramatically different than that of non-immigrants with a comparable education level," said Monica Patten, CFC's president and CEO.

"Integrating newcomers into our workplace is a necessity, not an option," said Diane Fehr, executive director of the Immigration Access Fund Society of Alberta. "Our country is going to rely on immigrants for all of our net labour force growth as early as next year. We need to act now."

The study, entitled Canada's Vital Signs 2010, is intended to provide a snapshot of how Canadian communities are faring in 10 key areas. Other findings included:

• Canadians who moved from renting to home ownership due to low interest rates are now carrying a great deal of debt, along with higher taxes and insurance rates, and even a relatively small increase in interest rates could make their homes difficult to afford.
• The number of doctors increased to 196 per 100,000 people in 2008, up 2.6 per cent from 2005, with women accounting for 52.1 per cent of new general practitioners and 45.1 per cent of new specialists.
• Nearly two-thirds of Canadians reported a strong or somewhat strong sense of belonging to their local community in 2009, up 1.5 percentage points from 2003. The figure ranged from a low of 54.9 per cent in Montreal to a high of 73.5 per cent in Saint John.