AI Analysis: Temporary foreign workers in the agriculture and agri-food sectors, by industry

Executive Summary

Temporary foreign workers (TFWs) in Canada's agriculture and agri-food sectors grew 57.2% from 48,585 jobs in 2016 to a peak of 81,517 in 2023, before a modest pullback to 76,372 in 2024, reflecting sustained and near-historic reliance on temporary foreign labour. The data is heavily right-skewed — a median of just 80 versus a mean of 1,345 — indicating that a small number of large industries, such as Food and Beverage Manufacturing and Meat Product Manufacturing, account for the bulk of TFW placements. A dramatic 37.5% single-year surge in 2023 stands out as the most significant anomaly in the decade-long dataset.

Key Findings

• TFW jobs in Canadian agriculture and agri-food sectors grew 57.2% over the study period, rising from 48,585 in 2016 to a peak of 81,517 in 2023 before declining slightly to 76,372 in 2024.
• The most striking anomaly in the dataset is the 2023 surge, when TFW jobs jumped by +42,794 (+37.5%) in a single year — by far the largest annual increase recorded.
• Food and Beverage Manufacturing recorded the highest single industry-year value in the dataset at 84,812 jobs in 2024, while Meat Product Manufacturing was flagged as a statistical outlier with 22,871 jobs in the same year.
• The distribution of TFW counts is strongly right-skewed, with a median of just 80 and a mean of 1,345 (range: 0–84,812), confirming that a small number of industries and regions dominate overall TFW employment.
• All three core metrics — TFW count, jobs filled, and agricultural operations employing at least one TFW — are strongly positively correlated, meaning growth in one consistently reflects growth in the others across industries and years.
• Growth accelerated sharply from 2020 onward, with total TFW jobs climbing from 57,165 in 2020 to 81,517 by 2023, suggesting pandemic-era and post-pandemic labour dynamics significantly intensified demand for temporary foreign workers.
• The dataset spans 21 industries and 11 geographies, but the 25th and 75th percentiles of just 12 and 481.5 respectively confirm that most industry-province-year combinations involve relatively few workers, with extreme values concentrated in a handful of large sectors.