The recession hit recent immigrants, particular those with a university education, much harder than Canadian-born workers, a new report says.

University-educated immigrants were four times more likely to be unemployed compared to their Canadian-born counterparts with a rate of 13.9 per cent versus 3.4 per cent, respectively, the Community Foundations of Canada report says.

In comparison, the overall unemployment rate was 15 per cent for new immigrants versus 7.8 per cent for Canadian workers.

Several factors are noted for the disparity in employment data including lack of Canadian work experience for immigrants, language barriers and lack of recognition for foreign credentials.

The Conference Board of Canada says that if all immigrants' foreign credentials were recognized, it would add up to $5 billion to the Canadian economy a year.

A recent Statistics Canada report found that immigrants trained abroad are much less likely to be working in their field of education than Canadians trained here (24 per cent verses 62 per cent).

The gaps in employment are largest in Alberta and Quebec. In Alberta, only 2.9 per cent of university-educated Canadians were unemployed, compared to 11.5 per cent for similarly-trained newcomers.

In Quebec, almost 20 per cent of university-educated immigrants were without a job.

In Toronto, which takes in 45 per cent of all of Canada's immigrants, the unemployment rate for university-educated immigrants is 14 per cent. That is compared to 3.3 per cent for their Canadian-born counterparts.

The report states half of Canadians have some post-secondary education as of 2009. That is an increase of 2.0 percentage points from 2006 and 18.1 percentage points since 1990.