{
 "title": "Ontario's new LMIA employers in 2026 Q1: 610 first-time employers",
 "headline": "610 Ontario employers received a positive LMIA for the first time in January to March 2026, 26% of the 2,380 approved employers in the province; professional occupations in advertising, marketing and public relations was the most common occupation among them.",
 "period_start": "2026-01-01",
 "period_end": "2026-03-31",
 "period_label": "January to March 2026 (2026 Q1)",
 "period_note": "Employment and Social Development Canada publishes the positive LMIA employer list once a quarter, a few months after the quarter ends. 2026 Q1 (January to March 2026) is the latest quarter published as of October 27, 2026, so this October 2026 report covers it.",
 "stats": [
  [
   "610",
   "first-time LMIA employers in Ontario, January to March 2026"
  ],
  [
   "26%",
   "of Ontario's 2,380 approved employers were new"
  ],
  [
   "969",
   "positions approved for the new employers"
  ],
  [
   "8,816",
   "positions approved in Ontario in all (27% of Canada's 33,216)"
  ]
 ],
 "summary": [
  "ESDC approved 33,216 positions for 7,882 employers across Canada in January to March 2026. Ontario accounted for 8,816 positions (27%) at 2,380 employers.",
  "610 of those Ontario employers (26%) had not appeared in any earlier quarterly list on file. Together they received approval for 969 positions. The most common occupation among them was professional occupations in advertising, marketing and public relations (25 employers), and Toronto had the most new employers of any city (116).",
  "A positive LMIA lets an employer apply to hire a temporary foreign worker for that position; it is not a work permit and does not mean a worker was hired. It is illegal for an employer or recruiter to charge a worker for a job or an LMIA."
 ],
 "method": "An employer is new when its name (ignoring case and punctuation) is not in any earlier quarterly list on file, in any province: 2021 Q2 to 2021 Q3 and 2022 Q1 to 2025 Q4. Employers are counted by name, so one company with several work sites counts once. Positions are the approved positions ESDC lists; streams include high-wage, low-wage, agricultural and permanent residence support.",
 "source": {
  "name": "Employment and Social Development Canada, Temporary Foreign Worker Program: positive LMIA employers list",
  "url": "https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/90fed587-1364-4f33-a9ee-208181dc0b97",
  "licence": "Open Government Licence – Canada",
  "licence_url": "https://open.canada.ca/en/open-government-licence-canada"
 },
 "chart": {
  "title": "Positions approved by province, January to March 2026",
  "rows": [
   {
    "label": "Quebec",
    "value": 11895
   },
   {
    "label": "Ontario",
    "value": 8816
   },
   {
    "label": "British Columbia",
    "value": 5683
   },
   {
    "label": "Alberta",
    "value": 2139
   },
   {
    "label": "New Brunswick",
    "value": 1774
   },
   {
    "label": "Nova Scotia",
    "value": 1115
   },
   {
    "label": "Saskatchewan",
    "value": 513
   },
   {
    "label": "Newfoundland and Labrador",
    "value": 394
   },
   {
    "label": "Other provinces and territories",
    "value": 887
   }
  ]
 },
 "table": {
  "title": "Occupations of Ontario's new LMIA employers",
  "columns": [
   "NOC",
   "Occupation",
   "New employers",
   "Positions"
  ],
  "rows": [
   [
    "11202",
    "Professional occupations in advertising, marketing and public relations",
    "25",
    "25"
   ],
   [
    "60030",
    "Restaurant and food service managers",
    "23",
    "27"
   ],
   [
    "72310",
    "Carpenters",
    "19",
    "21"
   ],
   [
    "85101",
    "Harvesting labourers",
    "16",
    "253"
   ],
   [
    "63200",
    "Cooks",
    "16",
    "19"
   ],
   [
    "62020",
    "Food service supervisors",
    "15",
    "20"
   ],
   [
    "13110",
    "Administrative assistants",
    "15",
    "15"
   ],
   [
    "12200",
    "Accounting technicians and bookkeepers",
    "14",
    "14"
   ],
   [
    "72410",
    "Automotive service technicians, truck and bus mechanics and mechanical repairers",
    "13",
    "14"
   ],
   [
    "13100",
    "Administrative officers",
    "13",
    "13"
   ],
   [
    "72106",
    "Welders and related machine operators",
    "12",
    "14"
   ],
   [
    "21231",
    "Software engineers and designers",
    "11",
    "13"
   ],
   [
    "62200",
    "Chefs",
    "11",
    "12"
   ],
   [
    "62010",
    "Retail sales supervisors",
    "10",
    "11"
   ],
   [
    "60020",
    "Retail and wholesale trade managers",
    "10",
    "10"
   ]
  ]
 },
 "publisher": "A3E Ecosystem Inc.",
 "url": "https://lmia.a3eecosystem.com/reports/2026-10/",
 "published": "2026-10-27",
 "updated": "2026-10-27",
 "licence_note": "Free to quote or republish with a link to https://lmia.a3eecosystem.com/reports/2026-10/"
}