AI Analysis: Countries of citizenship for temporary foreign workers in the agricultural sector

Executive Summary

Canada's agricultural temporary foreign worker (TFW) program grew dramatically over the past decade, with total worker counts nearly doubling from 43,921 in 2016 to a peak of 79,734 in 2023, before settling at 77,088 in 2025. The program is heavily concentrated among a small number of source countries — primarily Mexico, Guatemala, Jamaica, Honduras, and the Philippines — which drive a strongly right-skewed distribution where the median record holds just 26 workers while the mean reaches 1,482. These trends reflect sustained and growing reliance on international agricultural labour, with the sharpest acceleration occurring in the post-2020 period.

Key Findings

• Total agricultural TFWs in Canada nearly doubled over the decade, rising from 43,921 in 2016 to a peak of 79,734 in 2023, with the largest single-year jump of over 15,000 workers occurring between 2022 and 2023.
• The data is highly right-skewed: the median worker count per record is just 26 while the mean is 1,482, and 75% of all records contain 335 or fewer workers, reflecting extreme concentration among a handful of dominant source countries.
• Mexico, Guatemala, Jamaica, Honduras, and the Philippines consistently rank as the top source countries for agricultural TFWs, accounting for the vast majority of total worker volume across the 2016–2025 period.
• The dataset spans 11 geographies (Canada plus 10 provinces/territories) and 17 country-of-citizenship categories, with worker counts ranging from 0 to 79,734 — a range that underscores vast regional and national disparities.
• Growth was broadly consistent year-over-year, with only a minor dip in 2019 (53,605 workers) interrupting an otherwise steady upward trend from the 2018 level of 56,919.
• Outlier detection using Z-scores greater than 2 flagged several country-year combinations as statistically unusual surges, with high-volume countries like Mexico most commonly triggering outlier flags in their most recent peak years.
• Correlation analysis indicates that many top source countries send workers in tandem, suggesting shared responses to Canadian agricultural labour demand cycles such as seasonal harvest patterns and federal program expansions.