The Letter an Employer Needs Before Hiring From Abroad
Picture a restaurant owner in a small town who has advertised a cook's job for months. Applications come in, but nobody qualified — or nobody at all. Can she hire a cook from overseas? Not on her own say-so. First, she needs a Labour Market Impact Assessment: an official decision from Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), delivered through Service Canada, confirming that hiring a temporary foreign worker for that job will not come at the expense of a Canadian worker.
A positive LMIA confirms that a genuine job exists, the wage and conditions are fair, and no Canadian citizen or permanent resident is available to fill the position. It is the foundation of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. And it belongs entirely to the employer: the employer recruits, applies and pays. The worker's turn comes later.
What ESDC Is Actually Checking
An LMIA is not a work permit, and it is not a rubber stamp. Service Canada assesses whether the business and job offer are legitimate, whether the wage matches what the job should pay, and whether the employer genuinely tried to hire in Canada first. If the answer comes back negative, the hiring stops there — there is no work permit application to make.
The $1,000 Fee — and Why the Worker Never Pays It
Every LMIA application costs $1,000 per position requested, paid by the employer. Three rules around that fee are absolute:
- It cannot be paid by, or recovered from, the worker — not directly, not through deductions, and not via a recruiter charging the worker instead.
- It is not refunded if the application is withdrawn, cancelled or refused. The only refund is when a fee was collected in error.
- If Service Canada refuses to even process the application, no fee is charged at all.
Some applications are exempt, including on-farm primary agriculture positions and certain caregiver hires.
High-Wage vs Low-Wage: One Number Decides Your Stream
Which rulebook applies depends on the wage offered, compared against ESDC's hourly wage threshold for the province or territory of the job. That threshold is the provincial or territorial median hourly wage plus 20%, drawn from Statistics Canada's Labour Force Survey. For LMIAs received on or after July 17, 2026, the line sits at $36.92 an hour in Ontario and $38.40 in British Columbia.
Offer at or above the threshold and you are in the high-wage stream — which also means filing a transition plan to reduce reliance on foreign workers over time. Offer below it and the low-wage stream applies, with much heavier conditions. Either way, the wage must still match the prevailing rate for the occupation, and padding a wage just to land in a preferred stream can itself sink an application.
Advertise First: The Recruitment Rules
Before applying, the employer must prove a real search for Canadians and permanent residents. The job has to be advertised on the Government of Canada's Job Bank plus at least two additional recruitment methods, each reaching a different audience — with efforts aimed at groups such as youth, newcomers, Indigenous people and persons with disabilities.
Timing matters. High-wage positions need a minimum of 4 consecutive weeks of advertising within the three months before applying. Low-wage positions now need 8 consecutive weeks, and at least one recruitment activity must still be running until ESDC decides. Records of all of it must be kept for six years.
The Low-Wage Guardrails: Caps and Closed Cities
The low-wage stream carries two hard limits. First, a cap: low-wage temporary foreign workers can make up no more than 10% of the workforce at a specific work location. The cap rises to 20% in construction (NAICS 23), food manufacturing (NAICS 311), hospitals (NAICS 622), nursing and residential care facilities (NAICS 623) and specific in-home caregiver positions — while on-farm primary agriculture positions have no cap at all. Small employers are not squeezed out by math: a location with fewer than 10 employees is calculated as if it had 10, allowing one low-wage worker (two in a 20% sector).
Second, geography. Since September 26, 2024, Service Canada will not process a low-wage application when the job sits in a census metropolitan area with unemployment of 6% or higher at submission — though sectors like primary agriculture, construction, food manufacturing and health care are exempt from that refusal.
After a Positive LMIA: The Worker's Turn
A positive LMIA arrives as a letter, and the clock starts: it is valid for up to 6 months from the day it is issued. The employer gives the letter to the worker, who then applies to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) for an employer-specific work permit. Miss the six-month window and the LMIA expires unused — the employer starts over. An approved permit, not the LMIA itself, is what finally lets the worker start the job.
The Twikup Take
The LMIA is Canada's labour-market speed check: employers get a real path to hire from abroad, but only after proving the job was genuinely offered at home first — at a fair wage, with a $1,000 fee they can never hand to the worker. The paperwork is the point: Canadians first in line, and a paper trail to prove it.
Image: AI-generated illustration.