According to the 2021 Census, 7,013,835 people in Canada reported having Asian origins, representing 19.3% of the population.
The top three Asian origins reported in 2021 were Chinese (about 1.7 million people), Indian (India) (approximately 1.3 million) and Filipino (925,490).
The racialized groups with a high proportion of people of Asian origins are Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Southeast Asian, West Asian and South Asian populations.
Over a 20-year period (from 2001 to 2021), West Asian (214.1%) and Filipino (207.1%) populations grew at significantly higher rates compared with other Asian population groups, such as the South Asian (154.0%), Korean (114.6%), Southeast Asian (87.9%), Chinese (59.9%) and Japanese (42.4%) groups.
The majority (over 60%) of Asian groups are first-generation immigrants.
Because of a distinct immigration history, over one-third (34.2%) of Japanese people have been in Canada for three or more generations.
High educational attainment & professional occupations
Many Asian population groups have high educational attainment rates. Working-age (aged 25 to 64) Korean (60.5%), Chinese (56.3%), South Asian (55.2%), West Asian (52.9%), Japanese (48.2%) and Filipino (45.5%) populations have attained a bachelor’s degree or higher at rates above the national average (32.9%) in 2021.
Southeast Asians (30.5%) were the only Asian group that obtained a bachelor’s degree at a lower rate compared with the total population.
Largely as a result of higher educational credentials, many Asian populations held higher-paying professional jobs among the working-age population. South Asian and Chinese workers were well represented among engineers, computing professionals and doctors. The working-age West Asian population was also highly represented among engineers and doctors.
Labour force participation, self-employment, & income
In the first three months of 2024, Filipino workers aged 25 to 54 had markedly higher employment rates (88.6%) than the total core-age population (83.7%).
Core-age Korean workers experienced the greatest improvement in their employment outcomes from March 2023 to March 2024—their employment rates increased from 80.0% to 84.4%.
West Asian workers aged 25 to 54 were among the groups with the lowest employment rates. Their employment rate declined from 78.4% to 74.0% from March 2023 to March 2024.
In the first three months of 2024, the unemployment rates of core-age South Asian (6.7%), Chinese (7.2%) and West Asian (9.0%) workers were higher than the unemployment rate of the total population aged 25 to 54 (5.5%).
Many individuals among the Asian population are entrepreneurs. In 2021, all Asian groups aged 25 to 64, except for the Filipino population, had higher self-employment rates (15.2% to 24.0%) compared with the total working-age population (14.9%).
As in the case for the total population, the poverty rate for all Asian groups also declined from 2015 to 2020.
In 2020, the Filipino population (3.9%) had a significantly lower poverty rate than the non-racialized population (6.1%), while West Asian (13.4%), Korean (13.4%), Chinese (12.2%), Southeast Asian (9.3%), Japanese (7.3%) and South Asian (7.2%) populations had higher poverty rates compared with the non-racialized population.
