TEER 4 work and permanent residence: the door that is not the 600 points
If your work is TEER 4, the famous 600-point nomination is structurally out of reach — enhanced streams require an Express Entry profile you cannot have. Base provincial streams are not a worse version of that. They are a different door, where your score is irrelevant.
The 600 points are not your door
If your work is TEER 4 — home support, food service supervision, most of the occupations people actually get hired into — you have probably been told the same thing everybody else is told: get a provincial nomination, it is worth 600 CRS points, that solves it.
On TEER 4 work, that advice describes something you cannot reach.
Not "difficult". Structurally unavailable. And understanding exactly why is what opens the route that does exist.
Two kinds of nomination that work in opposite ways
Almost every article treats "PNP" as one thing. It is two, and the difference is the whole subject.
| Enhanced (Express Entry-aligned) | Base (non-Express Entry) | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does to your score | +600 CRS | Nothing — there is no score |
| Requires | An active Express Entry profile and eligibility under a federal programme | Nothing to do with Express Entry |
| Occupation floor | TEER 0–3, inherited from the federal programmes | Set by the province — can include TEER 4 and 5 |
| Speed | Express Entry speed | Slower, outside the electronic system |
Read the "requires" row against the "occupation floor" row.
An enhanced nomination adds 600 points to an Express Entry profile. To have an eligible profile you must qualify under the Federal Skilled Worker, Canadian Experience Class or Federal Skilled Trades programme. All three require work experience at TEER 0 to 3.
So if your work is TEER 4, you have no eligible profile, and there is nothing for the 600 points to be added to. The number is real. It is simply not addressed to you.
The reframe
Here is the part that matters, and it is not a consolation prize.
A base nomination is not a weaker version of the enhanced one. It is a different door. It does not improve your position in a competition — it takes you out of the competition. There is no pool, no cut-off, no score, and therefore nothing to optimise.
For somebody who has spent a year watching CRS cut-offs sit in the 510s while their own number goes nowhere, that is a genuinely different way to think about the problem. The question stops being "how do I score higher" and becomes "which province, which stream, which employer."
That also means the levers are completely different from the ones we costed in second diploma, or another year of work?. Nothing on that page helps you here, because none of it is a score problem.
What these streams actually ask for
They ask for a job offer, and usually a specific kind of one. Some real examples, as at 8 August 2026 — see the section below on why that date is attached.
Ontario launched three new pathways on 26 June 2026, one of which is explicitly a TEER 4–5 pathway. Its conditions:
- a full-time, permanent job offer at median wage or higher
- nine months cumulative experience in the past two years, in the same job with the same employer
- a secondary school diploma or equivalent
- CLB 4 in all four abilities
Look at that language requirement. CLB 4 is dramatically below the CLB 7 the Federal Skilled Worker programme demands. The bar here is not academic attainment or test scores — it is holding a real job, in one place, for long enough.
The Atlantic Immigration Program accepts work experience at TEER 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4. For a TEER 4 job the offer must be permanent, with no set end date, and for TEER 2, 3 or 4 you need a Canadian high school diploma or foreign equivalent.
British Columbia runs an entry level and semi-skilled stream that accepts TEER 4 and 5 in specific industries.
The Rural Community Immigration Pilot was active with 14 communities across six provinces as at February 2026, and helped over 1,000 people get permanent residence in its first year. Occupations across all TEER levels may qualify — but it depends on the community. Thunder Bay, for instance, considers only TEER 0 to 3. Two communities in the same programme can give you opposite answers.
The common thread: an employer, a location, and time in one job. Those are things you build, not things you score.
The honest picture on numbers
Provincial capacity was cut hard and has been partly restored.
| Plan | 2026 provincial nominee target |
|---|---|
| 2025–2027 Levels Plan | 55,000 |
| 2026–2028 Levels Plan | 91,500 — rising to 92,500 in 2027 and 2028 |
That is a 66% increase, inside a national target of 380,000 permanent residents a year for 2026–2028, of which the economic class is about 64%.
Two caveats worth as much as the headline.
It is still below the 2024 peak. More room than last year is not the same as plenty of room.
A national increase tells you nothing about your province. Alberta's 2026 allocation is 6,403, slightly below the number it nominated the previous year. Allocations are negotiated province by province, and the direction of travel nationally is not the direction in the place you actually live.
Why this page has a date on it
Everything in the examples section will go out of date, and probably faster than you expect.
Provincial streams open, close, pause, cap and rewrite their occupation lists several times a year. Ontario's TEER 4–5 pathway is six weeks old at the time of writing. Community pilots vary community by community. Allocations are renegotiated annually and can fall as well as rise.
So the durable part of this page is the first half — enhanced versus base, and why the TEER floor lives in the federal programmes rather than in the provinces. That structure has been stable and explains everything else.
The list is a snapshot. Use it to know what kind of thing to look for, then:
- Go to the province's own website, not an aggregator, and read the stream page on the day.
- Check the occupation list and the TEER levels it names, not the programme's reputation.
- For community pilots, check the community, because the programme's rules are not the community's rules.
- Check whether intake is currently open, which is separate from whether the stream exists.
- Note the date you checked, because you will be back.
What this does not solve
Being straight about the limits, because this route gets oversold once people discover it.
- A base stream is usually slower, because it runs outside the electronic system that makes Express Entry fast.
- A nomination is not permanent residence. It is a provincial nomination that supports a federal application, and the federal application is assessed separately.
- Most of these need a job offer you do not yet have, and the employer's willingness is the binding constraint. If a work permit is involved, that may mean an LMIA — which is the employer's process, costs them $1,000 by law, and takes far longer than the processing time suggests. We set that out in what an LMIA actually involves.
- None of it helps if your status lapses in the meantime. Timing beats strategy here, every time — out of status in Canada: the 90 days.
Where we stop
The distinction between enhanced and base streams, the TEER 0–3 requirement in the federal programmes, the levels plan targets and the published stream conditions above are all government sources and checkable. Reporting them is fine.
Telling you which province to aim at, whether your occupation code is right, whether a particular stream fits you, or how to present your work history is not. Under Canadian law that is regulated advice, and it may only be given by a Canadian lawyer, a Quebec notary, or a member of the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants.
This is a topic where that matters more than usual, because the answer is genuinely province-specific and changes during the year. A licensed professional reading your file this month is worth more than any amount of reading, including this page.
And the part that is ours
If a programme is part of how you get to one of these streams — a credential a province or an employer requires, in a place where a stream is open — that is the piece we can help with. Which programmes, in which province, what each genuinely costs, how long it runs, and whether it carries a post-graduation work permit.
Free, no agent fee to us, and cashback on your college fees on every one. And if the answer is that you do not need a programme at all, that is a perfectly good outcome.
See what is open to you in Canada
The requirement for an active Express Entry profile and federal programme eligibility on enhanced provincial streams, and the TEER 0 to 3 floor in the Federal Skilled Worker, Canadian Experience Class and Federal Skilled Trades programmes, are IRCC's published rules; base streams are administered by provinces and set their own occupation requirements. Provincial nominee targets of 55,000 under the 2025–2027 Levels Plan and 91,500 for 2026 rising to 92,500 for 2027 and 2028 under the 2026–2028 Levels Plan are IRCC's published allocations, within a national target of 380,000 permanent residents a year. Alberta's 2026 allocation of 6,403 is that province's published figure. Ontario's three new pathways, including the TEER 4–5 pathway and its conditions, were launched 26 June 2026. Atlantic Immigration Program TEER levels and the permanent job offer requirement for TEER 4 are that programme's published criteria. Rural Community Immigration Pilot participation of 14 communities across six provinces is as at February 2026 and eligible occupations vary by community. Checked 8 August 2026. Provincial streams change several times a year — confirm against the province's own website before acting. Nothing here is advice about your own eligibility, and nothing here predicts an outcome.