Updated July 2026. Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) updated its LMIA processing times for February 2026 data, and processing times increased across nearly every stream of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) — including the high-wage stream, despite an overall reduction in temporary foreign worker admissions.
High-Wage Stream: 60 Business Days
As of the February 2026 update, high-wage LMIA applications were taking 60 business days to process — two full weeks longer than three months earlier.
Why Processing Got Slower, Not Faster
This looks paradoxical at first: fewer TFWP admissions should mean less workload. The explanation is timing. When the federal government announced upcoming TFWP quota reductions in late 2025, employers rushed to submit LMIA applications ahead of the new rules taking effect, creating a surge that ESDC is still working through. At the same time, ESDC redeployed some staff to fraud-prevention initiatives, further reducing processing capacity for the backlog.
What This Means for Employers and Workers
If you’re an employer planning to hire through the high-wage stream, build at least 60 business days into your hiring timeline — longer if you’re applying during a period of anticipated rule changes, which tends to trigger similar submission surges. If you’re a worker waiting on an employer’s LMIA application, ask your employer when they submitted it and check whether ESDC has published more recent processing time updates, since these figures shift from month to month.
For current, official processing times by stream, see ESDC’s LMIA processing times page.
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