Countries With Visa Sponsorship Jobs (Nov 2026): 106,922 Open Jobs in Six Countries Compared

In six countries an employer needs a government's say-so before it can sponsor a work visa. Three keep a standing register: the Home Office list of licensed sponsors in the United Kingdom, Immigration New Zealand's accredited employers, and the IND register of recognised sponsors in the Netherlands. Canada and Ireland publish who received an approval, a positive Labour Market Impact Assessment or an employment permit, year by year. Australia requires standard business sponsorship and publishes no live register; the public list covers accredited sponsors only. None of these lists says who is hiring. In the table below, the share of listed employers with a job open on our board runs from 1.6 per cent in Netherlands to 22.4 per cent in Australia.

This page compares the six countries on the jobs. On 10 November 2026 our board held 106,922 open jobs from 11,424 employers across them. A job is on the board because its employer is on one of these lists or because the posting itself refers to visa sponsorship or a permit; a listing does not prove that this vacancy is open to someone applying from abroad. The first table gives, for each country, the open jobs, the jobs posted in the last 30 days, the employers with an open job, the share of the sponsor list with a job open, and the share of jobs at the ten largest employers. The second table gives the pay rules and the 2026 changes for each visa. Then the occupations with the most openings in each country and how each list moved.

Open jobs and employers, by country

Country	Open jobs	Posted in the last 30 days	Employers with an open job	Listed employers with an open job	Jobs at the 10 largest employers
United Kingdom	45,926	30,909	4,175	3,957 of 126,538 (3.1%)	6.2%
Canada	16,490	11,261	2,007	778 of 20,537 (3.8%)	17.3%
Australia	15,807	10,754	1,100	799 of 3,565 (22.4%)	22.1%
New Zealand	19,420	12,097	2,378	1,997 of 28,516 (7.0%)	14.9%
Ireland	8,396	5,637	1,521	777 of 12,595 (6.2%)	19.8%
Netherlands	883	547	243	208 of 13,010 (1.6%)	42.6%

United Kingdom has the most open jobs, 45,926. Australia has the highest share of listed employers with a job open, 22.4 per cent. Open jobs are most concentrated in Netherlands, where the ten largest employers hold 42.6 per cent of them, and least concentrated in United Kingdom, at 6.2 per cent. For one occupation the comparison is direct. Nurse responsible for general care, the ESCO label for registered nurses, has 1,200 open jobs in the UK, 936 in Australia, 537 in New Zealand, 508 in Canada, 351 in Ireland and 16 in the Netherlands.

The list columns use the same count as our sponsors hiring now article. An employer counts once, and list rows we could not match to an employer record are left out of both numbers. A job counts as open while its source still lists it, or for 60 days after posting when the source gives no end date, and only if our crawler saw it in the last 30 days.

What each visa requires in 2026

The pay rules below are the ones each government publishes for its employer-sponsored work visa, as read on the dates given. In the UK, Australia and New Zealand the offer must also meet the going rate or market rate for the occupation, and in Canada the prevailing wage, so a threshold is the lowest an offer can be, not what the open jobs pay. Ireland and the Netherlands set fixed amounts.

Country	Visa and who may sponsor	Pay rule	Changed in 2026
United Kingdom	Skilled Worker. The employer holds a Home Office sponsor licence.	£41,700 a year or the occupation's going rate, whichever is higher. £33,400 in the cases GOV.UK lists as not meeting the usual requirements, outside healthcare and education. Healthcare and education jobs follow national pay scales instead (GOV.UK, read 9 November 2026).	From 8 April 2026 the general threshold and the going rate must both be met in every pay period. English at level B2 for applicants since 8 January 2026. Jobs must be at degree level, RQF 6, since 22 July 2025, with a Temporary Shortage List for some roles below it. Care workers: no new recruitment from abroad since 22 July 2025.
Canada	Temporary Foreign Worker Program work permit. The employer holds a positive LMIA from ESDC, unless the job is LMIA-exempt.	No national figure. The employer pays at least the prevailing wage for the occupation and region. An offer at or above the provincial or territorial median hourly wage plus 20 per cent goes to the high-wage stream: Ontario $36.92, Alberta $37.50 and Quebec $36.00 an hour for LMIAs received from 17 July 2026 (ESDC).	ESDC does not process low-wage LMIAs for jobs in census metropolitan areas where unemployment is 6 per cent or higher at submission, with exemptions for primary agriculture, construction, food manufacturing, hospitals and nursing and residential care. The rate table is refreshed every three months; the current one covers 9 October 2026 to 7 January 2027.
Australia	Skills in Demand visa, subclass 482. The employer is an approved standard business sponsor; accreditation is optional.	Core Skills Income Threshold of A$79,423 for nominations lodged from 1 July 2026, A$146,576 for the Specialist Skills stream, and at least the market rate for the role (Department of Home Affairs).	The thresholds rose from A$76,515 and A$141,210 on 1 July 2026.
New Zealand	Accredited Employer Work Visa. The employer holds Immigration New Zealand accreditation.	The median wage requirement ended on 10 March 2025. The job must pay the market rate and at least the minimum wage (Immigration New Zealand).	47 occupations were added to the National Occupation List for the visa from 9 March 2026 (Amendment Circular 2026-01).
Ireland	Critical Skills or General Employment Permit, Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment.	€40,904 a year for a Critical Skills permit with a relevant degree and €68,911 without one, €36,605 for a General Employment Permit, from 1 March 2026 (DETE announcement of 2 December 2025).	The 1 March 2026 rise was 7.66 per cent, smaller than the 14.7 and 15.8 per cent first planned.
Netherlands	Highly skilled migrant permit. The employer is a recognised sponsor on the IND register.	Gross monthly salary of €5,942 at age 30 or over, €4,357 under 30 and €3,122 for recent graduates (IND amounts for 2026).	The amounts are indexed every 1 January.

Where the jobs are, country by country

United Kingdom

The Home Office register moves daily. 1,218 organisations first appeared on it and 1,364 were removed in the 30 days to 10 November 2026. On our board the UK has 45,926 open jobs from 4,175 employers, 30,909 of them posted in the last 30 days. The occupations with the most openings: social care worker (1,471), nurse responsible for general care (1,200), sales assistant (682), healthcare assistant (675), software developer (662). Social care worker is the largest group, and the Skilled Worker route has been closed to new care workers from abroad since 22 July 2025, so those postings are open to people already in the UK on the route. Search the register on the UK licensed sponsor list or look one employer up with the sponsor licence checker.

Canada

ESDC's LMIA tables for 2026 run to the end of Q2 and show 54,599 positions approved, against 164,276 in the whole of 2025. Our board holds 16,490 open Canadian jobs from 2,007 employers, 11,261 posted in the last 30 days. 778 of the employers received a positive LMIA in 2025 or 2026; the rest come from job boards and employer sites and are not matched to an LMIA employer of these two years. The occupations with the most openings: software developer (628), nurse responsible for general care (508), project manager (434), cook (340), cargo vehicle driver (268). The LMIA employer list is searchable by province, and designated employers in the Atlantic and rural programs can hire without an LMIA.

Australia

Our Australian list is the 3,565 accredited sponsors released under freedom of information in January 2025, a subset of frequent sponsors, not every business allowed to sponsor. Its share, 22.4 per cent with a job open, is not comparable with the UK's, which counts every licence holder. The board holds 15,807 open jobs from 1,100 employers, 10,754 posted in the last 30 days. The occupations with the most openings: nurse responsible for general care (936), customer service representative (269), project manager (245), software developer (211), commercial sales representative (189). Browse sponsors in Australia or the accredited sponsor list.

New Zealand

Accreditation is granted for a fixed term. At the last status check, 20 October 2026, 29,649 accreditations were current, 5,211 of them due to expire within 90 days of that date unless renewed, and 7,056 employers on the list had lapsed. The board holds 19,420 open jobs from 2,378 employers, 12,097 posted in the last 30 days, 1,997 of the employers accredited. The occupations with the most openings: nurse responsible for general care (537), social care worker (457), project manager (379), cargo vehicle driver (327), sales assistant (303). The accredited employer list shows the status and expiry date we hold for each employer.

Ireland

DETE issued 29,989 permits to companies in 2026 so far, against 31,044 in 2025. The board holds 8,396 open Irish jobs from 1,521 employers, 5,637 posted in the last 30 days, 777 of the employers with permits issued in 2025 or 2026. The occupations with the most openings: healthcare assistant (441), chef (373), nurse responsible for general care (351), social care worker (307), software developer (218). Browse permit holders by sector and region and the Critical Skills Occupations List.

Netherlands

The Dutch count is the smallest of the six. The board holds 883 open jobs from 243 employers, 547 posted in the last 30 days, seen on 31 job sites against 251 for the UK. 208 recognised sponsors had a job open, 1.6 per cent of the 13,010 on the IND register in its edition of 2 November 2026, so this share is the least complete of the six. The occupations with the most openings: project manager (62), mechanical engineer (30), supply chain manager (29), commercial sales representative (26), data scientist (26). See recognised sponsors in the Netherlands.

What the numbers leave out

The board collects jobs from job boards, government job banks and employer career sites it knows about, not from every employer, so a sponsor that advertises only where we do not look counts as not hiring. The hiring shares are therefore floors; the concentration figures describe the jobs the board sees. Occupation names are the ESCO labels our matcher assigns to each job; jobs it could not place are in the totals and out of the occupation lists. The United States is not in the comparison because H-1B sponsorship runs on an annual lottery, not a standing list; its numbers are in the seven-list article and on the H-1B employers page. The pay rules are government minimums for the visa, not what the open jobs pay: too few postings state a salary for a fair comparison between countries.

How to use this page

Check your occupation first: whether it is eligible for the visa and, for regulated professions such as nursing, what registration the country requires. Then use the second table to drop the countries whose pay rule an offer in your occupation cannot meet, and go to the jobs. The visa sponsorship jobs board filters by country and occupation, and an employer page shows the employer's list entries and open jobs together. Before applying, check the employer on its list; the search box at the top of this page looks a name up on all the lists at once.

Method

Counted on 10 November 2026. The counts are recalculated daily; the text around them was written on 9 November 2026. Jobs are the ApplyWave board, open as defined above. Employers are distinct employer records with an open job, and the ten-largest share is their jobs as a share of all jobs with a matched employer. The sponsor lists, the employer matching and the hiring share follow the sponsors hiring now article: counted once per employer, unmatched rows excluded.

List movement:

• United Kingdom: the Home Office register as downloaded daily, first appearances and removals compared edition to edition.
• New Zealand: Immigration New Zealand accreditation status and expiry dates, last checked 20 October 2026.
• Ireland: employment permits issued by company, DETE, 2025 and 2026.
• Canada: ESDC positive LMIA tables, 2025 and 2026.
• Netherlands: the IND public register of recognised sponsors, edition of 2 November 2026.
• Australia: the Department of Home Affairs accredited sponsor list released under freedom of information in January 2025 (FA 25/01/01229).

Pay rules, all read on 9 November 2026:

• United Kingdom: GOV.UK, Skilled Worker visa: your job; the pay-period rule from the Statement of Changes in force from 8 April 2026.
• Canada: ESDC, median hourly wages by province and territory and refusal to process low-wage LMIAs.
• Australia: Department of Home Affairs, salary requirements, thresholds for nominations lodged from 1 July 2026.
• New Zealand: Immigration New Zealand, Amendment Circular 2026-01 and the December 2024 announcement of reforms to the Accredited Employer Work Visa.
• Ireland: Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, announcement of 2 December 2025 on employment permit salary thresholds.
• Netherlands: IND, required amounts for 2026.