Canadian Employers Are Hiring More Foreign Workers: Here’s Why (2024)

Many Canadians take pride that their country being known for being diverse. Canada is a cultural mosaic, a mosaic made in great part due to immigrants and children of immigrants. That mosaic has continued to grow, as Canadian businesses are increasingly looking abroad to hire workers.

There’s a Growing Need for Talent

One reason that Canadian businesses are hiring more foreign workers, is because there are a lot of job vacancies that need to be filled. For the past year, Canada has had a record number of job vacancies.In the third quarter of 2021, Canada reached an all-time high of 912 600. These job vacancies were found to be consistent across all sectors, such as food services, health care, retail, and construction. The Omicron wave came shortly after the third quarter and brought a new onset of restrictions, erasing some of those job vacancies. However, the third quarter is still useful to examine as it is more comparable to 2022’s current labour conditions.

Fast forward to today, and Canada’s tight labour market continues. In addition to there just being more jobs than people,there are more part-time workerswho are not interested in full-time work, leaving more full-time job vacancies. This has caused the involuntary part-time employment rate to fall to its lowest level on record.

The Need for Talent Will Only Continue

Based on the 2021 Census, a substantial portion of Canada’s population is close to retirement.Currently 1 in 5, or 21.8%of Canada’s population is 55 to 64 years old. Canada’s labour market has never consisted of so many people close to retirement age. Canada’s labour market is already tight – and while conditions surrounding COVID-19 may change, as the years pass, more and more of that 21.8% of Canadians will retire, meaning more job vacancies.

The labour effects of having over one-fifth of Canada’s workforce close to retiring are exacerbated by Canada’s low fertility rate for the past 50 years, meaning not enough people have been born over the past five decades to help fill upcoming job vacancies. Only two provinces, Alberta, and Saskatchewan have more people under the age of 15 than those 65 and older. In other words, be it trends brought upon in the short term through COVID, or long-standing population trends, vacancies are here to stay – and companies need solutions to fill those vacancies.

Immigration Helps and the Government Agrees

In response to record job vacancies, the Federal Government has made recent reforms to the immigration process to bring foreign talent to Canada. By searching for talent beyond their own borders, Canadian companies are in part finding immigrants as the solution to filling their vacant jobs. While current immigration levels are not substantial enough to fill all job vacancies, Statistics Canada has noted that immigrants do have a“rejuvenating effect on the Canadian population.”

The Government of Canadahas made five specificreforms to supercharge the Temporary Foreign Worker Program:

1. Removing the limit to the number of low-wage positions that season employers can fill through the TFW program, as well as increasing the maximum duration of these positions to 270 days a year.
2. Labour Market Impact Assessments will be valid for 18 months, up 12 months from its before the COVID limit.
3. For High-Wage and Global Talent streams workers will have their maximum duration of employment go up to three years from two years.
4. For seven specific job sectors, employers can hire up to 30% of their workforce (low-wage positions only) through the Temporary-Foreign Worker Program. All other sectors have a still increased limit of 20%.
5. Terminating the policy that automatically refuses Labour Market Impact Assessments applications for low-wage occupations in the Accommodation and Food Services and Retail Trade sectors, but only for regions with unemployment rates greater or equal to 6%.

While it is too soon to know the exact statistical impact of these reforms, it is a safe bet that they will help businesses find the foreign talent they need. In the coming months and years, the solution to your talent needs can be found both within and beyond Canada’s borders.