August is typically a busy month for tourism: it’s the end of summer, and many families take the opportunity for one last break before school and work return to normal in September. This year, of course, the season has been overshadowed by tariffs, economic pressures, and global uncertainties, the effects of which have been building for months and are starting to be felt across the sector. What does the latest data tell us about the impacts on the labour market?

This analysis summarizes some of the recent changes in immigration policy and draws attention to programs and pathways other than the Temporary Foreign Worker Program.

The tourism sector in July 2025 grew by around 3% from where it stood last month, and was generally in a stronger position than last year. Given the strong economic headwinds facing the economy, and the decrease in visitors from the United States, domestic interest in travel seems to be enough to sustain the demand side of the equation, at least for the time being.

In spite of economic headwinds in the face of trade uncertainty, domestic tourism demand stayed strong into June, allowing the tourism labour market to maintain its momentum from May. Both labour force and employment in the tourism sector^[1] grew from May, while unemployment fell slightly^[2].

In spite of ongoing economic tensions between Canada and its largest trading partner, the Canadian tourism sector^[1] in May 2025 saw promising growth over the previous month^[2].

The tourism sector^[1] in April 2025 was in a stronger position than in March^[2], showing growth in both labour force and employment, and a slight decline in the unemployment rate. The sector also grew relative to April 2024, although it remained slightly below where it was in 2019.

Over the past three years, Tourism HR Canada’s research team has been closely monitoring and studying the shifting dynamics of the tourism workforce as the sector continues its post-COVID recovery.

Tourism HR Canada has tracked the tourism workforce’s post-COVID recovery through surveys, focus groups, and data analysis. This report highlights key themes and offers recommendations for policymakers, businesses, and future research.

The tourism sector^[1] in March 2025 contracted slightly from the previous month^[2], across both labour force and employment. Both indices were higher than they were last year (+2.1% and +3.0%, respectively), and around 1% higher than in March 2019.

The Canadian economy faces a rocky road ahead, in the face of unprecedented disruptions to the geopolitics of North America, and indeed around the world. The impacts that the coming changes will have on tourism are hard to predict: on the one hand, the value of the Canadian dollar relative to international currencies makes us an attractive destination, but social sentiment and political action may drive visitors towards other destinations, while financial turmoil may limit domestic travel.

In December 2023^[1], tourism businesses made up 6% of all businesses in Canada, employed 9.9% of all working Canadians, and accounted for around 3.8% of the national GDP (of which around 1.6 percentage points were attributable to tourism spending, and the remaining 2.2 to local customers). Tourism is big business by whichever metric you prefer, and tourism businesses are important anchors in their communities. So what do those operators actually look like?

Two of the most common myths around tourism employment are that it is (a) mainly for young people, and (b) low-paid and unreliable.

In other words, tourism doesn’t offer careers, it only offers short-term jobs for a transient and inexperienced workforce. These misconceptions have been around for a long time. They certainly don’t help when it comes to managing the sector’s reputation—and they are unfortunately hard to dislodge.