The assessment tests your recruitment, not your candidate.

The order it has to happen in

Most failed files are not wrong, they are out of sequence. Advertising done after the decision to hire, or a wage set before anyone looked at Job Bank, cannot be repaired later.

1. Fix the occupation and the work locationThe National Occupational Classification code drives the prevailing wage, the advertising audience and whether the position is prioritised. Choosing it for convenience is where these files go wrong at the very start.
2. Set the wage against the prevailing wageThe higher of the Job Bank median for that occupation and community and your own internal range. If the position genuinely requires more skill or experience than the classification describes, the wage should reflect that. Only guaranteed wages count, so overtime, tips, benefits, profit sharing, bonuses and commissions are excluded from the comparison.
3. Compare that wage with the provincial thresholdThis is the step that tells you which set of rules you are living under. It is also the step that tells you whether a refusal to process measure applies to the work location.
4. Check that the application can be processed at allThe cap on the proportion of low wage positions, the census metropolitan area measure, the Montréal and Laval measure, the in-home caregiver live in measure, the two year consequence of a revoked assessment, and the ineligible employer list.
5. Advertise, and keep the evidence as you goJob Bank plus at least two further methods, for a minimum of four consecutive weeks in the high wage stream or eight in the low wage stream, all inside the three months before you submit.
6. Deal with the provinceBritish Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia each require an employer registration certificate, or proof of exemption, filed with the application. Without it the application is incomplete. For a position in Quebec of more than thirty consecutive days the application has to go to Service Canada and to the province at the same time.
7. Write the transition planMandatory in the high wage stream unless an exemption applies, and if you have filed one before for the same position and location you have to report on what you actually did.
8. Submit through LMIA Online and payUp to six months before the expected start date. An incomplete application is not processed and the fee is not charged, which sounds harmless and costs you the whole advertising window.
9. Keep at least one recruitment activity runningOne of the three has to remain live until the decision is issued, and Service Canada reviews recruitment right up to that point. A Job Bank posting left active must still meet the Job Match and Direct Apply requirements.
10. On a positive decision, move quicklySend the worker the decision letter and Annex A, keep Annex B to yourself, and get them to apply for the work permit before the assessment expires. It is valid for up to six months.
11. Sign the employment agreement on or before day oneSame occupation, same wages, same conditions as the offer, in the worker's chosen official language, signed by both of you. Give them the Government of Canada information on their rights at the same time. Keep everything for six years.

Recruitment, where most of these files are lost

Two online advertisements of the same type count as one method. The advertisement itself has to carry the operating name, the business address, the title, the duties, the terms of employment, the language of work, the wage including any incremental raises, performance pay or bonuses, the benefits, the work location, contact information and the skills requirements. A wage range may be used, but the bottom of the range has to meet the prevailing wage.

• Check the variations list before you build a recruitment plan. The department publishes variations to the minimum advertising requirements for named occupations, sectors and provinces, and six of them remove advertising and recruitment altogether. They are the entertainment sector, where a worker is often hired for a very limited number of days in a specific location and on very short notice; a position with an international organisation or the mission of a foreign government, which will have selected the person under its own process; a position of short duration, meaning thirty days or less, where the job will no longer exist after the worker leaves and there is no opportunity to train a Canadian because the work needs specialised or proprietary knowledge; specialised service technicians and providers holding proprietary knowledge where the work is limited and no Canadian can be trained for it; warranty work, where the terms of the warranty require the work be done by workers the manufacturer designates; and a coasting trade position on a foreign vessel where the work is thirty days or less and no assessment has already issued for that position on that vessel in the same calendar year. Several further entries reduce the requirement or waive it conditionally, including academics, a Quebec selection certificate holder where the occupation code matches, replacements and transfers under the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program, and replacements under the Agricultural stream.
• Primary agriculture needs fourteen calendar days and one additional method. An employer hiring in primary agriculture through the high wage or low wage stream follows that stream's requirements, except that the advertisement need only be posted for a minimum of fourteen calendar days within the three months before applying, and only one additional method of recruitment is required rather than two. The additional method must be national in scope for a high wage position, or must target an underrepresented group for a low wage one. This is the single largest saving in the whole advertising regime and it is regularly missed.
• Two more entries change the shape rather than the length. An in-home caregiver need not list the business address in the advertisement, and may use a first name or other reasonable identifier rather than a full name, though the location of work still has to appear. And where a collective agreement provides for internal recruitment, an internal posting satisfies the minimum advertising requirement, provided every member of the bargaining unit had an opportunity to apply.

The wage, and the wage review you will forget

The wage is not a number you set once. It is a number you have to keep correct for the whole period of employment.

The threshold is the provincial or territorial median hourly wage plus twenty per cent, drawn from the Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey. It is updated annually and these figures took effect on 17 July 2026. Check the current table before you rely on a number, because an application filed a day either side of an update can land in a different stream.

• Prevailing wage is a floor, not a target. The higher of the Job Bank median for the occupation and community and the range you already pay comparable employees. Where the Job Bank median shows as not available, use the provincial figure, and failing that the national one.
• Reassess it at the start of employment. Whatever wage was on the application, you are required to apply the prevailing wage at the beginning of the worker's period of employment.
• Review it every year, by 1 January. Job Bank wages are refreshed in the autumn, and employers have until 1 January of the following year to do the review. The wage can never fall below the wage in the positive assessment, even if the prevailing wage drops. Employers who do not update are exposed under the compliance regime.
• Unionised positions follow the collective agreement. Same wage rates and forms of compensation as the agreement establishes.
• Only guaranteed wages count. Overtime, tips, benefits, profit sharing, bonuses, commissions and other compensation are excluded when the offered rate is assessed.

When the application will not be looked at

• The cap on low wage positions. Ten per cent of the total workforce at a specific work location, rising to twenty per cent for construction, food manufacturing, hospitals, nursing and residential care facilities and certain in-home caregiver occupations. An application above the cap may not be processed.
• Fewer than ten employees at the location. The cap is calculated on a workforce of ten, so you may employ at most one low wage foreign worker under a ten per cent cap, or two under a twenty per cent cap. Part time employees count as half. Vacant positions on the application and workers on approved assessments who have not started both count.
• Positions with no cap at all. On farm primary agriculture, caregiving positions in health care institutions, positions supporting permanent residence only, short duration positions generally of 120 calendar days or less that are truly temporary or highly mobile, and low wage seasonal positions not going beyond 270 calendar days, the last of which can be used once a year per work location.
• Temporary measures for rural areas, running to 31 March 2027. From 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027 an employer at a worksite outside a census metropolitan area, in a province or territory that has opted in, may be eligible to keep its current proportion of low wage positions filled by temporary foreign workers even where that proportion is already above its cap, and to work to a fifteen per cent cap in place of the usual ten. Rural means outside a census metropolitan area as determined by Statistics Canada. Whether either measure is open to you depends entirely on your province or territory, and on the date it came into effect there, because an application submitted before that date does not qualify. Sector variations and the positions with no cap are unchanged, and low wage positions under the permanent resident dual intent stream are excluded. The participation table is below.
• An in-home caregiver position with a live in requirement is not processed. This ground stands on its own. It does not depend on the wage level, on the cap or on the census metropolitan area unemployment rate. It catches a position classified as a private household under the North American Industry Classification System, in occupation code 31301, 32101, 44100 or 44101, that has been advertised and identified on the application as being sought to fill a position with a live in requirement. There are published exceptions for high medical needs clients, on a physician's note certifying both the medical condition and the need for live-in care or on the department's Schedule H medical certificate, and a route for exceptional circumstances on a written rationale filed in the Housing section of the application form.
• A revoked assessment closes the door for two years. An application may be refused processing for any position if you have had an assessment revoked in the past two years for having provided false, misleading or inaccurate information.
• The ineligible list. Applications from employers found non compliant, banned after an inspection, or in default of an administrative monetary penalty cannot be processed. What lands an employer there is set out at staying compliant.
• There is one small mercy. Where an application is refused processing, or where you are an ineligible employer, the processing fee is not charged and you are sent a letter with the reason. That is the only situation in which the money comes back.

From the department’s temporary measures page, which carried a page date of 27 July 2026 when we read it on 21 August 2026 and which is updated as more provinces and territories respond. Two points an employer will get wrong. British Columbia and Quebec have taken the retained proportion measure only, so there is no fifteen per cent cap in either. And three jurisdictions have declined outright, so a rural worksite in Alberta, Nunavut or Ontario gets nothing from this at all.

Timing and money

These are averages for the month before, published monthly, and they move sharply with volume. They start only when a complete application has been submitted and the fee paid, and they end when the decision letter is issued. They do not include the four to eight weeks of advertising that has to happen first, and they do not include the worker's own work permit application afterwards.

The Regulations prohibit an employer, and anyone recruiting for them, from charging or recovering from the worker, directly or indirectly, any fees related to the recruitment of the worker, along with the particular fees your own stream names. Three fees are named as exceptions to that prohibition, being the $100 visitor visa fee, the $200 temporary resident permit fee and the $155 work permit fee, so leaving those with the worker is not a breach. The $85 biometrics fee is a different thing again. It is imposed by section 315.1 of the Regulations on the person whose biometrics are collected, it is not a recruitment fee, and it is not one of the fees the prohibition names, so it falls outside the prohibition rather than inside it.

Readiness checker

A structured way to see where you stand against the published criteria. It returns an indication only, not an eligibility decision, not legal advice, and not a prediction that you will be invited.