Canada's job openings halved. Immigration took two years to follow.

This piece puts two official records side by side: Statistics Canada's count of job vacancies, and IRCC's count of the people it admits. Every chart below follows the province you pick. The data was read on 18 October 2026.

Half the openings are gone

Canada hit 990,325 job vacancies in June 2022, with a vacancy rate of about 5.6%. By July 2026 the count had fallen to 501,035 and the rate to 2.8%. Openings are roughly back to pre-pandemic levels. Unemployment hasn't recovered the same way: it stood at 6.5% in September 2026.

Immigration kept climbing after demand turned

Permanent-resident admissions are set years ahead in the federal levels plan. Each year's target comes from applications already in the queue. When demand turned in late 2022, admissions kept rising: 437,000 in 2022, 471,000 in 2023 and a record 483,000 in 2024. The first cut came in 2025, down to 393,000. January to July 2026 is another 10% below the same months of 2025.

The Temporary Foreign Worker Program is the one stream tied directly to job openings, because each permit needs a Labour Market Impact Assessment. It has come down more slowly. Permits taking effect peaked at 194,000 in 2024 and fell to 169,000 in 2025. Even so, January to July 2026 is still about a third above the same months of 2022, while openings have almost halved.

Newcomers don't settle where the vacancies are

Suppose immigration followed labour demand. Then the provinces with the most open jobs per worker would take in the most newcomers per resident. Mostly they don't. Ontario has the lowest vacancy rate of the four largest provinces. Yet it admits more newcomers per resident than Alberta, B.C. or Quebec, which all have more open jobs per worker. Manitoba and Saskatchewan do line up: tight markets, high intake, and a nominee program that picks a large share of their newcomers.

Change the axes to test other pairings. With ten provinces, one of them can move the result, so read the correlation as a description of the pattern, not as proof of cause and effect.

The biggest openings are the lowest paid

Canada's most-advertised job is in food service. From April to June 2026, employers were trying to fill 34,005 food counter attendant and kitchen helper positions. That's nearly twice the next occupation, retail salespersons, at 18,315. Registered nurses, truck drivers and cooks follow. Six of the top ten are sales and service jobs. Across sales and service, the average offered wage is $20.60 an hour, against $34.85 in health occupations.

Cooks are a special case. They top Job Bank's postings every month, but they are a much smaller share of the vacancies Statistics Canada counts. We looked at why in Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen?

Ottawa picks for skill. The openings call for service workers.

The 2026–2028 levels plan holds permanent residence flat at 380,000 a year. It moves room toward the provinces and away from temporary workers:

Express Entry draws in 2026 favour health care and social services, skilled trades, French speakers and, new this year, doctors, researchers and senior managers with Canadian experience, plus aviation roles such as pilots and aircraft mechanics. These are mostly well-paid, credentialed jobs. Health is where they match the vacancy data best. Health still has 63,850 openings, even after a 27% drop in two years.

The largest openings get little federal help. Since 2024, Service Canada has refused to process low-wage LMIAs in census metropolitan areas where unemployment is 6% or higher. With national unemployment at 6.5%, that covers most large cities. As of October 2026, only 11 of them were below the threshold. Food service and retail employers there now have to hire locally. That is the policy's intent: when unemployment is high, low-wage openings should go to people already here.

So the gap isn't just about how many people come. Canada's openings are concentrated in food service, retail and transport. Its selection system is built to pick nurses, tradespeople and doctors.

What to watch

• The next levels plan. The federal government tables it by 1 November each year.
• Third-quarter vacancies. Statistics Canada publishes them in December.
• Which occupations provinces pick. PNP room grows by two-thirds in 2026 while openings keep sliding. A province nominates, but only IRCC grants permanent residence.

Method and sources

• Vacancies come from Statistics Canada's Job Vacancy and Wage Survey, an employer survey. They are not a count of online job ads. Sources: table 14-10-0432-01 (monthly, by province, seasonally adjusted) and table 14-10-0443-01 (quarterly, by occupation, not seasonally adjusted).
• Unemployment is from the Labour Force Survey, table 14-10-0287-01. Population is from table 17-10-0009-01.
• Permanent residents and TFWP permits are from IRCC open data: permanent residents, monthly and work permit holders, monthly, both to July 2026. IRCC rounds values to the nearest 5 and hides values from 0 to 5, so totals are approximate.
• TFWP permits count permits that took effect, renewals included. That's why they run above the plan's 60,000 target for new arrivals. International Mobility Program permits are left out because they aren't tied to a specific vacancy.
• Policy is from the 2026–2028 levels plan and ESDC's refusal-to-process rule. IRCC announced the 2026 Express Entry categories on 18 February 2026.

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