Are Americans trying to get out before they go down with the ship?
That could be one explanation for a 58 per cent jump in the number of times Americans searched for jobs in Canada this year, through the job-hunting site Monster.
Sheryl Boswell, Monster Canada's director of marketing, says there is no way to know for sure why Americans are suddenly so interested in working in Canada. However, she says the timing is certainly "coincidental" with the heated election battle between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Boswell told CTV News Channel on Thursday that the jump in Canada-related search terms is "very significant," when compared to numbers from 2015.
Boswell says most of the U.S. interest is in Canadian white-collar jobs, with engineering roles topping the list as the most-searched. Information technology jobs were the second-most popular, followed by accounting jobs.
According to numbers from Monster, there were more than 30,000 job searches using the keyword "Canada" from January to October of this year. That's much more than in all of 2015, when there were fewer than 20,000 searches using that term.
Ontario was the most popular province for Americans to hunt for jobs, followed by Alberta, B.C., Quebec and New Brunswick.
However, as Boswell points out, there are significant legal and tax-related hurdles for Americans hoping to snag a job north of the border.
"Even though there are some jobs available, it may not be the easiest thing to just pack up and move," she said.
In some cases, large companies will help an American employee move north to work at a Canadian branch, Boswell says. But without that help, many hoping to work in Canada face an uphill struggle.
"You'd have to do much of that legwork yourself," Boswell said.
