Are Americans Searching Jobs in Canada?

By Monster Contributor

By Lily Martis, Monster staff

You’ve surely heard people say it: “If [CANDIDATE NAME] gets elected, I’m moving to Canada!”

Is this election is making you want to move to Canada, You aren’t alone

Our exclusive data shows that Americans are looking for work past the northern borders. Gee, we wonder why.

As we get closer to decision day in this very, very contentious presidential campaign cycle, increasing numbers of U.S. citizens have expressed this desire to move up north if their least favorite candidate wins the election. Maybe you’ve even said it yourself.

Well, it’s time for a fact-check, American public: Are you really willing to put your money where your mouth is? We decided to dig into Monster data to see whether people are actually considering Canada.

And the polls say… yes, you are.

Monster data shows that the number of Americans job searching in Canada is up about 58% in 2016 over last year. Between January and October of this year, we saw 30,296 job searches using the keyword “Canada” on Monster’s U.S. website, which is a jump from the 19,693 in all of 2015.

Now granted, correlation is not always causation—meaning, we have no way to prove the motivation of those who performed searches—but the timing sure is suspicious.

So where are these would-be émigrés hoping to end up? The top Canadian province American job seekers are looking at is Ontario, with more than 7,500 Americans searching for jobs there. In Ontario, the city of Toronto appears to be the hot spot for job seekers, with more than 3,000 Americans searching for jobs in the province’s capital city in 2016.

Heading northwest, American job seekers also seem to have their sights set on the provinces of Alberta (No. 2) and British Columbia (No. 3). In Alberta, data showed that Edmonton and Calgary were popular cities for U.S. job seekers. B.C.’s seaport city of Vancouver—the backdrop for movies like Deadpool, Fantastic Four and Juno—also was a popular search. More than 1,250 Americans have searched for jobs in the “Hollywood North” this year.

The French-speaking province of Quebec (No. 4) and Canada’s Maritime province of New Brunswick (No. 5) rounded out job seekers’ top destinations.

If you’re thinking about crossing the border yourself, you want to follow those crowds since the top city for overall jobs available is Toronto, with 39,346 openings, followed by Montreal in Quebec with 25,412 openings.

When it comes to who’s looking for work up in America’s hat, engineers come up on top, with that being the most common job title searched for in conjunction with “Canada” by Americans this year. Specifically, more than 2,000 Americans are looking for work in Canada as civil engineers, mechanical engineers, software engineers and chemical engineers.

About 1,200 Americans have searched for information and technology jobs in Canada, making IT the second most popular job searched. Within this sector, people in the U.S. most commonly searched for jobs as Java developers, network administrators, .Net developers and web developers.

Accountants, we did the math, and we see you looking, too. The third-most searched job in Canada, positions for accountants, clerks and bankers were common job titles among American job seekers this year.

Other popular Canada job searches by Americans were for sales and human resources positions.

If you want to join the search party, you’ll find the top five job titles by openings in the Great White North are:

1. Retail salesperson with 25,843 openings

2. Retail sales supervisors with 12,926 openings

3. Transport truck drivers with 13,002 openings

4. Sales and account representatives with 12,411 openings

5. Customer and information representatives with 11,696 openings

With nearly 7,000 positions available, Walmart is the top company hiring in Canada on Monster, followed closely by Canada’s grocery giant Loblaw.

So, if you feel like the country’s future is headed south come Nov. 9, at least you’ve still got options to the north. (You can find those Canadian jobs via Monster’s U.S. and Canada sites, by the way.)

Just make sure you pack a warm winter coat if you go, eh?