There are two different questions hiding inside "what jobs are in demand in Canada", and answering the first one does not answer the second.
The first is what employers are advertising. The second is what the immigration system will pay you points for. Almost every "in-demand jobs" list answers the first and lets you assume the second follows. It does not follow. In July 2026 the two were pulling in opposite directions, and the gap is large enough to decide whether a job offer is worth taking.
What the country is actually advertising
Employment and Social Development Canada publishes every posting on the national Job Bank as an open dataset. In July 2026 it carried 51,999 postings across the provinces and territories.
Sorted by skill tier — the NOC's TEER levels, where 0 is management and 5 needs no formal credential:
- TEER 0 and 1 — the professional and management tier: 20.0% of postings
- TEER 4 and 5 — the tier requiring a high-school credential or on-the-job training only: 33.6%
A third of everything advertised sits in the two lowest tiers. In Ontario it is 33.8%, in British Columbia 31.8%, in Alberta 31.1%. This is not a fringe of the labour market. It is the largest single block in it.
And it dominates the top of the list. Ontario's six most-posted occupations in July were cooks, retail salespersons, home child care providers, home support workers, food counter attendants, and transport truck drivers. Four of those six are TEER 4 or 5.
What the points systems do with them
Now put the same occupations through the grids the provinces actually publish.
Ontario's Workforce Priority Stream scores TEER directly:
- TEER 0 or 1 — 9 points
- TEER 2 or 3 — 6 points
- TEER 4 or 5 — 0 points
It scores occupational category separately, and there the same jobs land near the floor: health occupations take 10 points, trades 8, sciences 6, management and business 4, and sales and service 2. Cooks, retail salespersons and food counter attendants are all sales-and-service occupations.
So Ontario's single most-advertised occupation, cooks, collects 6 for TEER and 2 for category — 8 points of the 19 those two factors can pay. A retail salesperson collects 0 and 2. Two points out of nineteen, for the second-most-advertised job in the province.
The province is not being irrational. A points grid is a statement of what a province wants to *retain permanently*, and that was never the same list as what it needs *filled this month*. But nobody tells applicants the two lists differ, and the gap is where people lose years.
The part that costs the most
A provincial nomination is not permanent residence. Its enormous value — the 600 Comprehensive Ranking System points IRCC adds to an Express Entry profile — only exists if you can take the nomination *through* Express Entry.
Every federal Express Entry program requires skilled work experience at TEER 0, 1, 2 or 3.
TEER 4 and 5 are outside it.
So for a third of the jobs Canada is currently advertising, the 600-point escalator is not merely hard to reach. It is not on the map. A nomination earned in one of those occupations has to travel a slower, narrower road, and the number that makes provincial nomination famous never appears.
This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in the whole process, and it is entirely invisible if you are reading a list of in-demand jobs.
Wage is doing the same work by another name
British Columbia does not score TEER at all. Its Skills Immigration grid puts 55 of its 200 points on the hourly wage in the job offer — more than any other factor by a wide margin.
The median advertised wage in B.C. in July 2026 was $25.00 an hour. On B.C.'s published ladder that is worth 10 points out of 55.
The median job in British Columbia scores under a fifth of the province's largest scoring factor. Not a bad job — a median one. The grid is calibrated well above the middle of the market it draws from.
Ontario does the same thing more cheaply: its median advertised wage of $22.00 falls in the $20.00–$24.99 band, worth 5 points of 15.
Alberta is the interesting exception. Its Worker Expression of Interest grid scores no wage at all. What it pays for instead is a regulated occupation you already hold the Alberta certification for — 10 points, the same weight as a permanent full-time job offer itself. For a tradesperson, Alberta is asking a completely different question from B.C., and the answer that wins in Vancouver is not the answer that wins in Calgary.
What to do with this
Not "avoid TEER 4 and 5 jobs." People take the work that is offered, and that work is often what pays the rent while the rest of it is figured out.
What it means is narrower and more useful:
- Check the tier before the salary. The NOC code on a job offer decides which doors exist. Look it up before you accept, not after.
- A promotion can be worth more than a raise. Moving from a TEER 4 role to a TEER 3 one changes which federal programs you qualify for. A dollar an hour does not.
- The same profile scores differently by province. Wage is decisive in B.C., certification in Alberta, occupational category in Ontario. Score yourself against more than one grid before you decide where to move.
- Never assume "in demand" means "points." They are two different lists maintained by two different parts of government for two different purposes.
Sources
Posting counts are from Job Postings Advertised on Canada's National Job Bank Website, Employment and Social Development Canada, published on open.canada.ca under the Open Government Licence – Canada. Figures are for July 2026, the most recent month published, read 2026-08-21. They count *postings*, not the labour market — Job Bank is a large sample of Canadian hiring, not a census of it, and it under-represents occupations that recruit privately.
Point values are read from each province's published grid: Ontario's Workforce Priority Stream table, British Columbia's Skills Immigration Program Guide, and Alberta's Worker Expression of Interest Points Grid. Each calculator on this site carries the date its grid was last checked against the source.