LMIA Canada: The 2026 Employer and Worker Guide

What an LMIA is and what it actually proves

A labour market impact assessment is the document that shows there is a Canadian need for a temporary foreign worker. It is not a work permit, and it is not issued by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. It is issued by Employment and Social Development Canada through Service Canada under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, and it is the employer who files it.

A positive assessment confirms two things. It confirms that Canadians and permanent residents are not available to do the job, and it confirms that there is a need for a temporary foreign worker to fill it. That is the whole test, and it is why the assessment looks at the local labour market, the wage being offered, the advertised recruitment effort and the employer history. A negative assessment is equally common, and it is why employers ask about processing time before they commit to a start date.

Two practical facts follow from the structure. A positive assessment is valid for up to six months after it is issued, and the application can be filed up to six months before the job is expected to start. And a worker who already holds an open work permit does not need an assessment at all, because there is no employer-specific sponsorship to justify.

If you are a worker rather than an employer, the practical sequence is short. Your employer files the assessment, receives a decision letter, and gives you the decision letter and Annex A, which is the employment details attachment. You then file the work permit application with those documents. After the employer gets a positive decision, you apply for the work permit, and IRCC administers that file rather than Service Canada.

The streams, and what each one is for

There is more than one route to hire a temporary foreign worker, and they are not interchangeable. Most employers use either the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, which requires an assessment, or the International Mobility Program, which does not.

The Global Skills Strategy is the route that has changed most in 2026, and it is worth understanding separately from the assessment streams. It allows an employer to hire a highly skilled worker without an assessment for a TEER 0 or 1 role, or with an assessment through the Global Talent Stream, and it publishes a two-week target for work permit processing when the worker applies online from outside Canada with a complete application. There are conditions: the worker must apply from outside the country, the application must be complete, and International Experience Canada participants are not eligible. The spouse and dependants of a qualifying worker can apply at the same time.

The employer process, step by step

Employers file through LMIA Online, which has been the mandatory channel since April 3, 2023, and they need a Job Bank for Employers account to do it. The process has a fixed shape, and each step can stop the file.

1. Check the exemption list first. If the occupation and the offer fall under an exemption, the employer skips the assessment entirely and moves to the International Mobility Program route.
2. Choose the stream and the fee. The high-wage and low-wage streams carry a C$1,000 fee per position requested, and the fee is not refunded if the application is withdrawn, cancelled or refused. Fee exemptions exist for home care where a medical certificate attests to incapacity, for childcare where gross annual income is C$150,000 or less and the child is under 13, and for on-farm primary agriculture in the listed occupation codes.
3. Recruit and advertise. For the low-wage stream, since April 1, 2026 the position must be advertised for eight consecutive weeks within the three months before the application, the advertising must target job seekers aged 15 to 30, Job Match must be used, all job seekers matched in the first 30 days and rated two stars or more must be invited, and records must be kept for six years.
4. File in LMIA Online and pay. An application counts as complete only when all required documents for the stream are provided, the employer has signed everything, and the fee has been paid. Incomplete applications are not processed, and you are not charged for them.
5. Receive the decision. A positive decision letter comes with Annex A, the employment details attachment, and your employer gives you both to include in the work permit application.
6. Keep complying. The employer must maintain records, honour the terms of the offer, and not recover recruitment or processing costs from the worker. Non-compliance can mean a monetary penalty, a hiring ban, and a place on the public non-compliant list.

One rule deserves emphasis because it is enforced hard: recruitment fees cannot be charged to the worker, and the processing fee cannot be recovered from them either. An employer who passes the C$1,000 cost on to you is breaking the programme rules, and it is worth knowing that before you sign anything.

When no assessment is needed

The exemption categories are published as codes, and reading them as plain language matters more than memorising the letters. The groups cover agreements and arrangements between Canada and a province or territory, Canadian interests including reciprocal employment arrangements, cases where there is no other means of support, permanent residence applicants already in Canada, vulnerable workers, and humanitarian reasons, along with public policy categories.

These exemptions are what the International Mobility Program is built on. In that route, the employer pays the C$230 compliance fee, submits an offer of employment through the Employer Portal, and receives an offer of employment number. The number is a seven-digit number that starts with the letter A, and it is single use: it is matched to your work permit application using the number together with your passport number and citizenship, and once matched it cannot be reused. The paper fallback form for this route is IMM 5802, and it is used only where the employer is not permitted to use the portal.

Some employers are exempt from the portal and the fee entirely. Employers hiring a worker who already holds an open work permit do not file an offer. So do foreign missions and consular posts, international organisations recognised under the Foreign Missions and International Organisations Act, foreign governments, and the owners or operators of international bridges and tunnels.

For workers, the practical benefit of the exemption route is speed, not cost. The employer does not wait for an assessment, so the work permit file can usually be created as soon as the offer of employment number exists, and the Global Skills Strategy adds a two-week processing target on top of that for TEER 0 and 1 roles.

Wage rules, NOC 2021 and the transition plan

The assessment looks at whether the wage you have been offered is reasonable for the occupation, and the rule is precise. The offered wage must be at least the provincial or territorial median hourly wage for that occupation plus 20 per cent, using the Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey figures, and it must be consistent with the prevailing wage for the occupation. The thresholds were updated on July 17, 2026, and the current figures are published province by province.

Occupation codes come from the 2021 version of the National Occupational Classification, which has been mandatory since November 16, 2022. The five TEER categories describe the education and training a job requires: TEER 0 for management, TEER 1 for university degree, TEER 2 for college or vocational, TEER 3 for secondary, TEER 4 for on-the-job training, and TEER 5 for no formal training. The code drives the wage threshold, the stream, the exemption eligibility and the Global Skills Strategy route, so it is the first thing to get right.

The high-wage stream has one more requirement that catches employers: a transition plan is mandatory. It sets out how the employer will fill the role permanently, and it is not a formality that can be left blank. Where a job has a genuine long-term need but the employer has not thought about how the position becomes a Canadian job, that is what the assessor is looking for.

Processing times and fees in 2026

Assessment processing times are published by Service Canada as average business days, updated monthly, and they vary significantly with volume. The advertisement period is not included, which matters because the eight-week low-wage advertising requirement adds more than two months before the clock even starts.

The fee picture is the other number employers plan around, and the largest change of 2026 sits here. The assessment processing fee is now C$1,000 per position requested, against the long-standing C$185 figure that most published guides still quote. For an employer hiring ten positions, that is C$10,000 rather than C$1,850, and it changes which stream is commercially viable. The employer compliance fee in the no-assessment route is C$230 per employer, rising to C$690 for a group of three or more entertainers.

The work permit itself is separate and cheaper. A work permit costs C$155 per person including extensions, biometrics cost C$85 for an individual, and the work permit processing times are published by country of application, currently 4 weeks from the United Kingdom, 5 weeks from China, 6 weeks from the United States, 9 weeks from the Philippines, 10 weeks from India and 16 weeks from inside Canada. Foreign nationals are advised to apply for the work permit after the employer receives a positive assessment, or within two weeks of the current permit expiring.

One gap is worth flagging. The Canadian processing times published for the global talent stream are far shorter than the assessment times, and employers who quote only the two-week global skills strategy target are describing a different route from the standard global talent stream, which still requires an assessment.

Quebec and agriculture: the special cases

Quebec has its own layer. A worker taking a paid Quebec position of more than 30 consecutive days needs a Quebec Acceptance Certificate from the ministry of immigration, and the employer gives them a copy. With an assessment, the employer files with Service Canada and, for a Quebec position of more than 30 consecutive days, the application goes to Service Canada and to the Quebec ministry at the same time, in the format the province requires and in French. For positions of 30 days or less, the certificate is not required.

Without an assessment, no certificate is required. Quebec employers can also file an unnamed assessment for certain Quebec positions through the provincial platform, with Service Canada assessing and issuing it, and the list of occupations on the facilitated process was updated in February 2026. A separate exemption for Quebec work permit extensions took effect on March 13, 2026, and there are further exemptions for certain Quebec permanent selection and experience programme applicants.

Agriculture is defined narrowly and the definition carries the fee exemptions. Primary agriculture work means work performed within a farm, nursery or greenhouse involving specified activities, in the listed occupation codes, which cover farm managers and supervisors, specialised livestock workers and other on-farm roles. Roles in those codes are exempt from the assessment processing fee. The seasonal programme covers workers from Mexico and participating Caribbean countries against a national commodities list, and the broader agricultural stream covers other countries.

Rural temporary measures are also live. From April 1, 2026 to March 31, 2027, employers outside census metropolitan areas in participating provinces and territories can retain an over-cap proportion of temporary workers, with a 15 per cent cap in place of the usual 10 per cent for certain low-wage positions. Alberta is not participating in the measure, and permanent residence dual-intent low-wage positions are excluded.

The Job Bank role and the advertising rules

The Job Bank is the federal service where employers advertise roles and where workers search for jobs, and since April 1, 2026 it is central to the low-wage stream rather than optional. Low-wage employers must advertise the position on the Job Bank, or submit a written rationale explaining another method, and the advertising must have run for eight consecutive weeks inside the three months before the application.

The recruitment requirements are cumulative. Job Match must be used, Direct Apply is enabled by default and its applicants must be considered, all job seekers matched in the first 30 days who are rated two stars or more must be invited, and at least two additional recruitment methods are required from the approved list, which includes general employment websites, online classifieds, specialised occupational sites, newspapers and newsletters, community resource centres, employment centres, magazines and journals, job fairs and training institutions. For low-wage streams the advertising must also target job seekers aged 15 to 30, and records must be kept for a minimum of six years.

Workers should know what the employer is doing behind the scenes, because it affects whether the file is sound. A properly advertised low-wage role in a genuinely tight local market should attract a documented pool of qualified local applicants, and the assessment tests exactly that. If the recruitment record is thin, the assessment is where it shows.

What the worker needs from the employer

If you are the applicant rather than the employer, your side of the file is short, and every document on it comes from the employer. Getting these documents early is what stops a file sitting in a queue for months with nothing to assess.

Two of those deserve a warning. A positive assessment is only valid for up to six months after it is issued, so if the employer took a long time in the recruitment stage, the clock may already be running when you receive it, and you should file your work permit application promptly. And an offer of employment number is single use, so if the employer has a queue of candidates, make sure the number in your application is the one issued for you, because a mismatch is one of the most common technical reasons a work permit file is returned.

When the assessment is refused

A negative assessment is not unusual, and the decision letter explains the reasons. In most cases they are about the recruitment effort and the wage rather than about the applicant, which means the employer can often address them and refile.

• The advertised recruitment was not sufficient, which after April 1, 2026 means the eight consecutive weeks of advertising inside the three-month window, the youth targeting, the Job Match use and the required additional recruitment methods were not all in place.
• The offered wage did not meet the threshold, which is the provincial or territorial median hourly wage for the occupation plus 20 per cent, using the thresholds published on July 17, 2026.
• The occupation code was wrong, so the assessment was assessed against a different threshold and a different stream than the employer intended.
• The employer has compliance findings, which can make the assessment fail regardless of the strength of the application.
• The transition plan for a high-wage role was missing or inadequate, and that document is a mandatory requirement rather than a formality.

Two things are worth understanding about the cost of a negative decision. The C$1,000 processing fee is not refunded, because the fee covers the assessment process and not the outcome. And a refile starts a new cycle of recruitment and assessment, so the realistic cost of a negative decision is two months of delay on top of the fee. That is the number to plan around when a start date is fixed.

The whole timeline, end to end

Employers and workers are often surprised by how long the full sequence takes, because the published processing times cover only one stage of it. Here is the realistic sequence for a low-wage hire starting from nothing in 2026.

The Global Skills Strategy is the outlier that is worth understanding, because it collapses part of that sequence. For a TEER 0 or 1 role where the employer uses the no-assessment route, the work permit processing target is two weeks, provided the worker applies online from outside Canada with a complete application. That target does not apply to the standard Global Talent Stream, which still requires an assessment, and it does not apply to International Experience Canada participants, who are excluded from the stream entirely.

Who pays the LMIA fee, and can the employer charge it back?

The employer pays, and the employer cannot recover it from you. The processing fee is C$1,000 per position requested, and Employment and Social Development Canada prohibits employers and third-party representatives from recovering that fee, or recruitment costs, from the foreign worker. An employer who deducts it from wages, or asks you to reimburse it, is breaking the programme rules.

The first step for a worker is therefore to know which costs belong to the employer. The assessment fee, the C$230 compliance fee in the no-assessment route and recruitment costs all sit with the employer. The costs that belong to you are the work permit fee of C$155, the biometrics fee, any medical examination, and any translation or document fees.

If you are asked to pay an employer cost, keep the receipt and take advice before you pay it. The prohibition exists because charging workers for the right to be hired turns a labour shortage programme into a fee, and the sanctions for an employer are heavier than the fee itself.

Common questions about the LMIA process

A worker usually asks whether the assessment is a work permit. It is not. The assessment is the employer's document; the work permit is yours, and it is issued by IRCC. The two are sequential: no positive decision means no work permit application.

Employers usually ask how long it takes, and the honest answer is that there are two clocks. The assessment clock is the published stream average, which ran from 7 to 98 business days in September 2026, and the advertising clock before it, which is up to eight weeks on its own. The work permit clock is separate and published by country. A realistic total for a low-wage hire starting from scratch in 2026 is five to seven months.

A third common question is whether the assessment can be filed for several positions at once. It can, and the fee is C$1,000 per position requested, so the total is the fee multiplied by the number of positions. For six positions or more there is a pilot that allows the processing fee to be paid by online banking, and Service Canada invites employers into that pilot by email.

Finally, workers and employers both ask what happens after a negative assessment. The employer receives a decision letter explaining the refusal, and there is no fee refund because the fee covers the assessment rather than the outcome. A fresh application is possible after addressing the stated issue, usually a wage or recruitment problem, and the six-month validity of a positive assessment is worth planning around.

Frequently Asked Questions