Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) released new data on January 9, 2026 showing that Metro Vancouver’s unemployment rate fell below 6%. This is a pivotal threshold for employers looking to obtain permission through a Labour Market Impact Assessments (LMIA) to hire low-wage foreign workers, which includes any foreign worker being paid a wage of $36.60 or less per hour. In this blog we’ll discuss why this development is so important and what employers and foreign workers alike need to know over the next few months and beyond.
Why is the Low-Wage LMIA stream available now?
In the summer of 2024, ESDC announced new measures to prohibit employers from accessing the low-wage LMIA stream if they are located in Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs) with an unemployment rate of 6% or more. Practically speaking, these measures are revisited on a quarterly basis when ESDC releases new unemployment data that tells employers whether they can access the stream or not. For comparison, below I set out the relevant unemployment data from April 2025 to April 2026 for Metro Vancouver:
|
April 4 – |
July 11 – |
October 10, 2025 – |
January 9 – April 9, 2026 |
|
6.6% |
6.3% |
6.8% |
5.9% |
As you can see, it’s been almost a year since Metro Vancouver employers have been able to access this LMIA stream because unemployment has remained stubbornly above 6%. However, the current lower unemployment rate at 5.9% allows them to once again apply for low-wage LMIAs to hire foreign workers, at least for the next three months before the unemployment rates are updated by ESDC.
To provide additional context, Metro Vancouver employers are not the only ones to benefit from the recently updated unemployment rates – there are other CMAs that have recently fallen below the 6% cutoff, including Winnipeg (5.7%) and Halifax (5.2%), just to name a few, so employers across the country will benefit from the latest changes.
Why is this important?
Over the past few years our government has made an aggressive push to reduce the number of new temporary and permanent residents arriving in Canada by implementing policies that severely restrict immigration options for those wishing to come to Canada and those wanting to stay. Recent data shows that the effects of these policies have taken hold in the country. For instance, according to a recent Statistics Canada report Canada’s population actually decreased last year between July and October 2025, which means that more people are leaving the country than there are newcomers to replace them. The sharp decrease in population was largely attributed to the dramatic drop in the number of new international students who are coming to Canada to pursue higher education, but recent reporting also paints a gloomy picture for workers who are now facing the prospect of leaving Canada due to expiring work permits.
According to the CBC there are as many as 1.4 million foreign workers whose permits expire this year. Of those, about 55% or 770,000 people will have to leave by June 2026. This represents a staggering number of people who will be looking for ways to remain in Canada, including through an employer-supported LMIA application. Given the convergence of these two events – the temporary opening of the LMIA stream for low-wage workers and the fact that many foreign workers are looking for low-wage LMIAs to stay in Canada – the Canadian government might well be facing an avalanche of new LMIA applications in the next few months.
What do you need to know?
Employers wanting to apply for a low-wage LMIA will need to act fast to submit their application before April 10, 2026 when ESDC is next scheduled to update unemployment rates. Given the requirement that employers must advertise vacant positions to the Canadian public for at least four weeks before applying for an LMIA, employers cannot afford to waste any time and should begin the advertising process right away.
However, the low-wage LMIA stream is not a panacea – there are massive limitations to obtaining this type of LMIA to support a work permit extension or an initial work permit for a foreign worker. The first major limitation is that low-wage workers are only entitled to obtain one-year work permits. This means that employers and foreign workers will have to accept that this is a short-term solution unless there is a viable pathway towards obtaining permanent residency. Additionally, as per my September 2024 blog, most foreign workers who obtain low-wage LMIA work permits will not be eligible to help their spouses acquire accompanying open work permits. Finally, my own prediction is that with an expected increase in new LMIA applications we will also likely see a corresponding rise in refusals. For months now we have followed the government’s efforts to introduce new rules related to LMIAs that make the entire process very difficult to navigate, thereby increasing the chances of refusal: See my October 2025 blog for an example of new mandatory requirements further complicating an already administratively burdensome process.
The bottom line is that the recent unemployment rate changes represent a potential ray of sunshine for many foreign workers who are looking for a lifeline to stay in Canada and for their employers who desperately depend on their services. However, with the way that immigration processing has evolved, it is now very difficult to obtain an LMIA approval and it is foreseeable that many employers who try to apply for low-wage LMIAs in the next few months will be refused. Employers and foreign workers who are interested in applying for low-wage LMIAs from now until April 9, 2026 will need to consider all the drawbacks of applying and should take advice from experienced legal counsel to help them navigate the legal and administrative challenges ahead.
