Actor Brian Cranston is just the latest celebrity to say that if their preferred candidate (in his case, Hillary Clinton) doesn’t win on Election Day, they’re moving to Canada.
It’s a refrain commonly heard among ordinary Americans as well, but most people dismiss it as so much hot air. However, new data shows that such vows may be more than just empty threats this year.
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A growing number of Americans are taking the first step toward making a cross-border move by researching the availability of jobs in the Great White North.
The number of Americans searching for jobs in Canada shot up nearly 60 percent from January to October this year, compared to the same period last year, according to data from Monster.com.
The report finds that 7,500 Americans have been looking for jobs in Ontario, with Toronto being the most popular city. Many of the potential expats are in high-demand fields, with engineering, IT and accounting being the top three job categories searched.
This may be a good year for them to make the move. The Canadian government recently announced that it is hoping to attract nearly 74,000 foreign highly skilled workers next year, 26.1 percent more than last year.
Canada is the second most popular country for American expats, with 343,000 Americans calling the country home. Mexico, the most popular, counts 877,000 Americans as residents, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
Of course, the data can’t prove that the search increase stems from Americans who want to escape Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, but that’s a fairly large unexplained jump. At a minimum, it suggests that this election is making some people review their options (if not their sanity), and that a substantial number of Americans are dreaming of making a move to a country with a very different political culture.
