53
The largest decreases in unemployment rates among Aboriginals were felt by those with
education ending in the fifth to eighth grade (10.9 percentage points), those who went to college
but did not receive a certificate or diploma (10.3 percentage points) and those who went to
university but were not awarded a certificate or diploma. Aboriginals with a master‘s degree saw
unemployment rise by 4.1 percentage points and those with education less than grade five saw
unemployment rates rise 1.7 percentage points.
In terms of the gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations, all but two
categories saw improvements for Aboriginal Canadians. Only the master‘s degree category and
the less than grade 5 education category saw the gap widen.
iii. On-Reserve/Off-reserve Aboriginal Unemployment Rates
Unemployment is also greatly affected by the opportunities present in ones‘ place of
residency. Unfortunately, rural settings are generally less conducive to finding employment than
urban settings, and on-reserve Aboriginals find themselves disproportionately in a rural setting.
Evidence from Western Canada demonstrates the significant impact that rural settings have on
the overall labour market success of Aboriginals. Chart 13 illustrates this fact: the unemployment
of on-reserve Aboriginal Canadians was 29.9 per cent in 2001, nearly doubled that for off-
reserve Aboriginal Canadians (16.6 per cent).
F. Employment Rates of Aboriginal Canadians
Participation rates capture the percentage of the working age population who are in the
labour force, and the unemployment rate determines what share of the labour force is not
currently employed. Therefore, employment rates, defined as the proportion of the working age
population employed in the reference week, are a function of the two former rates.
i. Situation in 2001
Aboriginal Canadians had significantly lower employment rates than non-Aboriginal
Canadians in 2001. The overall rate for Aboriginal persons was 49.5 per cent, whereas it was
61.8 per cent for non-Aboriginals (according to the 2001 Census), a gap of 12.3 percentage
points (Table 7). This was the combined result of both the participation rate gap (5.2 points) and
the unemployment rate gap (10.6 points) outlined in previous sections.
In the same vein, we noted earlier that about 25 per cent of the unemployment rate and
more than a 100 per cent of the participation rate could be explained by differences in
educational profiles between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations. For the employment
rate, we calculated that if Aboriginal Canadians had the same educational profile as non-
Aboriginal Canadians in 2001, their employment rate would be 56.7 per cent. In other words, in
2001, about 58 per cent of the gap in employment rates can be directly attributed to differences
in educational attainment (Appendix Table 53).
The employment rate was lowest for persons with low educational attainment: 16.1 per
cent for those with less than grade 5, 24.0 per cent for those with grade 5 to 8 and 37.2 per cent