If you are looking at working in Canada, the acronym LMIA will appear almost immediately. A Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) is a formal document that says hiring a specific foreign worker will not negatively affect the Canadian labour market. One detail trips up many readers: an LMIA is issued by Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), not by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). IRCC issues the work permit afterward.

Where LMIAs matter

LMIAs show up in two main places.

Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) work permits. Most closed TFWP work permits require a positive LMIA before the worker can apply to IRCC for the permit itself.

Express Entry. Historically, an LMIA-backed arranged employment offer added a large bonus to your Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score: 50 points for most TEER 0, 1, 2, and 3 roles, and 200 points for senior management TEER 0 roles. As of March 2025, IRCC removed those arranged-employment CRS points entirely. If you are acting on older guidance that still treats an LMIA as a big Express Entry lever, update your expectations: that bonus is now zero.

The main LMIA streams

• High-wage stream for roles paid at or above the provincial or territorial median wage.
• Low-wage stream for roles paid below that median wage, subject to caps on the share of an employer's workforce that can be foreign workers.
• Global Talent Stream (GTS) for fast-tracked processing of specific tech occupations on the Global Talent Occupations List.

Specialized streams also exist for agriculture (including the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program, SAWP), caregivers, and a facilitated Quebec stream that uses its own list. For the full map, see ESDC's Hire a Temporary Foreign Worker page.

LMIA-exempt work permits

Many foreign workers in Canada do not need an LMIA at all. They come through the International Mobility Program (IMP), which covers streams such as intra-company transferees, professionals under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (known as CUSMA in Canada and USMCA in the United States), International Experience Canada (IEC), Post-Graduation Work Permits (PGWPs), and open spousal work permits. See IRCC's International Mobility Program overview.

How the process runs

The LMIA is employer-driven, not worker-driven.

1. The employer pays the LMIA fee. There is no cost to the worker for the LMIA itself.
2. The employer advertises the role in Canada on Job Bank and through other required channels for a minimum period before applying.
3. The employer submits the LMIA application to ESDC.
4. If the LMIA is positive, the worker uses it to apply for the work permit through IRCC.

Validity and processing times

An LMIA is valid for a set period, and both that window and the time it takes to get one are updated from time to time. Speed differs by stream, and the Global Talent Stream is the fastest of them. We print no figure here, because any number we typed would be out of date before you read it: ESDC publishes the current validity period and its own processing commitments, and those pages are the only figures worth planning around.

One more time: the March 2025 change

Since older articles across the web still quote the old 50 and 200 point figures, it is worth repeating: since March 2025, an LMIA-backed job offer no longer adds any CRS points in Express Entry. An LMIA still matters for work permits, and a closed work permit can help you build Canadian work experience that counts elsewhere (for example in the Canadian Experience Class or a Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) stream), but its direct CRS value is gone.

What this means for your report

Our questionnaire does not ask about a job offer at all, and that is a deliberate choice rather than a gap: an offer is a thing you go and get, not a fact about who you are. So the employer-driven routes never read as met on that point. Instead the report hands you the work as checklist steps in plain words, "Secure a qualifying job offer" on the streams that need one and, on the two LMIA-based work permit streams (high-wage and low-wage), "Secure an LMIA-backed job offer", with the note that most employer-driven streams need a positive Labour Market Impact Assessment from your employer.

The March 2025 change is built in as well: the CRS score the report calculates awards nothing for arranged employment, so your total is the same with or without an offer in hand. What it does not do: it cannot apply for an LMIA, because only your employer can; it does not check whether a particular employer is eligible, whether a wage clears the median for its province, or whether a role is LMIA-exempt; and it never tells you a permit will be granted.

Next steps

Curious how you score without the old LMIA bonus? Try the free CRS calculator, which awards nothing for a job offer, exactly as IRCC now does.

When you want your full set of Canadian options mapped from one set of answers, answer the free questionnaire. The questions are free, the eligibility summary at the end is free, and payment unlocks the full report with the checklist behind each route.