NOC 33102 vs 44101 vs 44100: Which Care Worker Code Belongs on Your File (2026)
Updated: 6 days ago
NOC 33102 and NOC 44101 cover the same work on paper and open completely different doors. If your care is given inside a hospital, nursing home or long-term care facility, the code is NOC 33102, a TEER 3 occupation that clears the skill-level requirement for Express Entry. If the care is given in the client’s own residence, it is 44101, TEER 4, which does not. Ansari Immigration, a Vancouver RCIC practice, treats the one line in an employment letter that says where the care happened as the deciding fact, not the job title.
That single line is worth more than it looks. A care worker filed under NOC 33102 can enter the Express Entry pool, sit in a targeted healthcare draw, and make their spouse eligible for an open work permit. The same person, same duties, filed under 44101, gets none of those three, and the one federal program built for 44101 is closed to new applications, with IRCC’s notice confirming the pause dated December 19, 2025. Getting it wrong is not a paperwork error. IRCC refuses on exactly this point, and the Federal Skilled Worker eligibility page tells you why: your experience only counts if you performed "the actions in the lead statement of the NOC job description, and most of the main duties listed."
NOC 33102 vs 44101 vs 44100: the three care worker codes side by side
Three codes catch almost every care job in Canada. Two of them are about adults and one is about children, and the split between all three is the setting, not the skill.
| NOC 33102 | NOC 44101 | NOC 44100 |
|---|---|---|---|
Official title | Nurse aides, orderlies and patient service associates | Home support workers, caregivers and related occupations | Home child care providers |
TEER | 3 | 4 | 4 |
Where the work happens | Hospitals, nursing homes, assisted care facilities, other health care establishments | The client’s own residence, where you may also live | The children’s home or your own home, where you may also live |
Typical titles | Health care aide, long term care aide, nurse aide, orderly, patient care aide, psychiatric aide | Home support worker, live-in caregiver for seniors, personal care attendant for home care, respite worker | Nanny, babysitter, child care provider in a private home, parent’s helper |
Federal Skilled Worker and Canadian Experience Class | Eligible (TEER 3) | Not eligible on its own (TEER 4) | Not eligible on its own (TEER 4) |
Express Entry healthcare and social services category | Listed | Not listed | Not listed |
Makes a spouse eligible for an open work permit | Yes, 33102 is named on the select TEER 3 list | No | No |
Home Care Worker Immigration pilots | Cannot be the job-offer occupation, but may count as relevant experience for the home support stream | Is the job-offer occupation for the home support stream | Is the job-offer occupation for the child care stream |
BC PNP Skills Immigration | Eligible band, with a registry condition | Outside the eligible TEER band | Outside the eligible TEER band |
Source: NOC 2021 Version 1.0 unit groups 33102, 44101 and 44100 from Employment and Social Development Canada, mirrored on Statistics Canada’s NOC 2021 Version 1.0; Express Entry category-based selection, page last updated June 22, 2026; spouse and dependent child work permit eligibility; and the Home Care Worker Immigration pilots job offer page. Verified October 2026. The BC PNP row is an inference from the Skills Immigration guide’s TEER 0 to 3 stream requirements: the June 10, 2026 guide does not name 44101 or 44100.
The line that decides your code is where the care happens, not what you are called
Boil it down first. The National Occupational Classification does not sort people by job title. It sorts them by a lead statement, which is the short paragraph at the top of each code describing what that group of workers does, and by a list of main duties underneath it. Your title can say anything. The lead statement is what has to match.
Here are the two lead statements, in the government’s own words. NOC 33102 workers "assist nurses, hospital staff and physicians in the basic care of patients" and are "employed in hospitals, nursing homes, assisted care facilities for the elderly and other health care establishments." NOC 44101 workers "provide personal care and companionship for seniors, persons with disabilities and convalescent clients" and, the deciding clause, "provide care in the client’s residence, where they may also reside."
Then the NOC does something most readers never see. Each code carries an exclusion list that names the jobs people wrongly file under it and sends them elsewhere. Under NOC 33102, one of those exclusions reads: "Personal care attendant - home care (See 44101 Home support workers, caregivers and related occupations)." Under 44100, two of them read: "Live-in caregiver - seniors; Live-in caregiver - persons with disabilities (See 44101 Home support workers, caregivers and related occupations)."
Think of it like a hospital ward versus a house call. A nurse, a cleaner and an aide inside the building are classified by the building’s function. The moment the same aide drives to a client’s apartment and does the same bathing, dressing and feeding there, the classification follows the address, not the hands. That is why a facility-trained personal support worker who moves into private home care changes TEER level on the day the setting changes, even though nothing about their competence changed.
So ask yourself the question an officer will ask: if your employment letter named only the duties and deleted your job title, could a stranger tell whether those duties were performed in a facility or in someone’s home? If the answer is no, that letter is the problem, not your work history.
What NOC 33102 unlocks that NOC 44101 does not
Three doors open on TEER 3 and stay shut on TEER 4.
The first is Express Entry itself. The Federal Skilled Worker Program requires experience in TEER 0, 1, 2 or 3, and the Canadian Experience Class works on the same band. The Federal Skilled Worker page puts the duration plainly: "at least 1 year of continuous work or 1,560 hours total (30 hours per week)." The Canadian Experience Class adds its own limits, which catch care workers often: the year has to be Canadian work experience gained in the three years before you apply, and self-employment does not count. A year in a long-term care home under 33102 builds that. A year of the same hours in clients’ homes under 44101 does not, because TEER 4 falls outside the band.
The second is category-based selection. IRCC’s current healthcare and social services category list, on a page last updated June 22, 2026, includes nurse aides, orderlies and patient service associates (33102) among its eligible occupations. Neither 44101 nor 44100 appears. A targeted healthcare draw can pull a 33102 profile out of the pool at a lower score than a general round would, and no draw exists that does the same for a home support worker. Our breakdown of how category-based selection actually works covers the mechanics.
The third door is the one almost nobody connects to their NOC code, and it belongs to someone else in the household. A spouse or common-law partner can apply for an open work permit only if the principal worker is employed in a TEER 0 or TEER 1 occupation, or in one of a defined set of TEER 2 and TEER 3 occupations. IRCC’s eligibility page sets out the select TEER 3 occupations as individual NOC codes, and 33102, nurse aides, orderlies and patient service associates, is one of them. Home support workers are nowhere on either list. IRCC also requires the principal’s work authorization to remain "valid for at least 16 months after" the spouse’s application is received, so the timing of your own permit matters as much as your code. Our guide to the spouse open work permit sets out the rest of the test.
Read that back as a single sentence and it becomes uncomfortable. Your work setting decides whether your husband or wife can legally work in Canada.
If your job letter describes both a facility and home visits, tell us in the comments how it is worded. Keep it general; for advice on your own file, use a consultation.
Doing it alone: you read the two NOC pages, pick the code that matches your title, and find out at the decision stage whether the officer agreed, by which point the filing fee is spent and the clock has run.
With Ansari Immigration: the firm’s licensed RCIC reads the employment letter against the lead statement before anything is filed, and will tell you plainly when the honest answer is that your code does not support the application you were hoping for. That is the whole point of paying for an hour of someone’s judgment rather than a form-filling service. An LMIA-based work permit file is a flat $1,000 in professional fees, quoted upfront.
What NOC 44101 unlocks, and why that door is currently shut
NOC 44101 is not a dead end by design. It is the job-offer occupation for the home support stream of the Home Care Worker Immigration pilots, the program built specifically so that home support workers could reach permanent residence without a TEER 3 code. NOC 44100 plays the same role for the child care stream. On the pilots’ job offer page, the location condition is explicit: for home support, "the location can’t be an institutional setting such as a nursing home."
The problem is timing. IRCC paused intake and the pilots are closed. The eligibility page states: "The pilots are closed while we focus on processing existing applications. We understand that this will be disappointing for prospective applicants." The accompanying notice, dated December 19, 2025, says intake "will not re-open in March 2026" and that IRCC "will continue to process applications received to date, in line with the Immigration Levels Plan." The reason given is demand: "interest in the Home Care Worker Immigration pilots continues to exceed the spaces available, leading to longer wait times."
As of October 2026 the pilots page still carries the closed notice, and IRCC has published no reopening date. Because this is the kind of status that can change without warning, confirm it on the Home Care Worker Immigration pilots page before you build a plan around it. Our standing update on the caregiver path to permanent residence tracks the same question.
What is left for a 44101 worker in the meantime is a work permit route rather than a direct PR route: an employer-supported permit through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, which starts with a positive Labour Market Impact Assessment, or an LMIA-exempt category if one genuinely applies. The comparison of the different types of work permits shows where each one leads. Time on a 44101 permit is not wasted, but it does not accumulate into Express Entry eligibility the way 33102 time does, and that is the honest shape of the trade.
The contradiction inside the pilots that nobody writes down
Here is where the official guidance pulls against itself, and it catches real applicants.
The pilots’ job offer page says NOC 33102 is not an eligible occupation for the job offer. The pilots’ work experience page says something different about the same code: "Work experience in NOC 33102 gained in an institutional setting (for example, long-term care) may be eligible." Both pages are current. Both are correct. They are answering two different questions and using the same code to do it.
Translated: your past years as a nurse aide in a long-term care home can count toward the pilot’s experience requirement, but the job you are being hired into has to be a 44101 home support position in a private residence. The same is true on the child care side, where experience in 42202 can count only in the assistant or helper half of that group. The page is explicit: "Only experience as an assistant, helper or worker counts. Experience as an early childhood educator, day care teacher or in a supervisory or administrative role doesn’t count." The job offer itself must still be 44100.
So the answer to "is 33102 eligible for the pilots" is both yes and no, depending on which half of the application you are asking about. A reader who takes the job offer page at face value will conclude their long-term care years are worthless here. They are not.
What goes wrong: how a care worker code actually gets reclassified
An AI summary cannot tell you this part, because it comes from how officers are trained rather than from a public page.
IRCC’s internal officer training material for provincial nominee files, released under the Access to Information Act, works through sample cases where the declared code does not survive. A candidate whose letter calls her a contact centre supervisor, but whose duties are answering enquiries and processing refunds, is moved down to a complaints clerk code. A financial services officer at a bank, doing counter deposits and cheques, is moved to customer service representative. The instruction behind every one of those examples is the same: read the duties against the lead statement, not the title.
The point in that material that matters most to a care worker is the one about consequences. A reclassification is survivable when the corrected code still falls inside the eligible band, and fatal when it does not. That is exactly the 33102 and 44101 problem. Moving between two TEER 3 codes is an inconvenience. Moving from TEER 3 to TEER 4 removes the program you applied under.
A second internal document, the CPC-Edmonton standard operating procedure on assessing work experience, shows the softer side of the same test. Where an employment letter does not set out duties at all, officers are told they may still be satisfied if the applicant is educated for the declared position, the employer is of that nature, there is no other plausible position they would hold, and the wage is consistent with the work. Officers must make a note when they rely on that reasoning. For a care worker that cuts both ways: a facility employer and a health care aide certificate support a 33102 claim, and a home care agency on the letterhead quietly undercuts it.
When the duties do not match, the refusal language is blunt. In a refusal letter published by another regulated Canadian immigration consultant, the officer’s own decision notes read: "The duties described do not correspond to the essential duties associated with the declared NOC." The refusal in that file was framed under section 11.2 of the Act together with the program regulation, the pairing that applies where an application follows an Express Entry invitation to apply. We have not independently verified that letter, so treat it as an illustration of the wording rather than as our own case file, but the test it applies is the published one.
The same logic reaches the household. IRCC’s spouse eligibility page makes the select TEER 2 and 3 lists the gate, and a principal applicant sitting in 44101 is outside them, which is a documented reason spousal open work permits get refused even when every form is complete.
So the practical defence is unglamorous. Make the employment letter say the setting, in the first paragraph, in plain words, and make the duties under it read like the lead statement of the code you are claiming.
What the employment letter has to carry
The employer’s legal name, address and the nature of the business, so the setting is visible without being asserted
Where the work was physically performed: the named facility, or that care was provided in clients’ private residences
Your job title, and the duties written so they track the NOC lead statement and most of the main duties
Hours per week and the total period of employment, so the 1,560-hour threshold can be checked
Wage, and whether it was paid employment rather than volunteer or training hours
The signature, title and contact details of someone who can confirm all of it
Our walkthrough of the Express Entry reference letter sets out the full required components.
Two care workers, same title, opposite outcomes
Here is how this typically plays out. Both scenarios below are illustrative and built only from the rules verified above, not from a particular client file.
Priya works at a long-term care home in Burnaby. Her badge says personal support worker. Her day is bathing, dressing and feeding residents, taking blood pressure and temperature, charting, and moving residents by wheelchair, all inside the facility. Those duties track the NOC 33102 lead statement, so her code is 33102, TEER 3. After a year at 32 hours a week she is past 1,560 hours and has Canadian experience that counts for the Canadian Experience Class. Her occupation is on the healthcare and social services category list, so a targeted draw can reach her. And because 33102 is named on IRCC’s select TEER 3 list, her husband can apply for an open work permit, provided her own work permit still has at least 16 months to run when his application is received.
Marco works for a home care agency in Surrey. His badge also says personal support worker. His day is bathing and dressing one senior client in her apartment, preparing her meals, light housekeeping and keeping her company. Those duties track NOC 44101, TEER 4. The same year of the same hours gives him no Canadian Experience Class eligibility, no category draw, and no open work permit for his spouse. The program designed for his exact occupation, the home support stream of the Home Care Worker pilots, is closed to new applications.
Neither of them did anything wrong, and neither can simply choose the better code. Marco’s path runs through an employer-supported work permit now and a reopened pilot or a provincial stream later, which means his planning horizon is measured in policy announcements rather than in hours worked. Priya’s runs through Express Entry, which means hers is measured in hours and in score.
Check-in question: if Marco’s agency reassigned him to a nursing home contract next month, when would his code change? On the day the setting changed, not the day his duties did, and only the hours after that date would read as 33102 experience.
What the official guidance does not settle
Three gaps are worth naming, because pretending they are answered is how people get hurt.
First, the split-setting worker. Plenty of care workers do facility shifts and home visits in the same week, for the same employer. The NOC says there is "mobility among the occupations" in the 44101 group, and the exclusion lines tell you which group each setting belongs to, but no published IRCC page explains how a single application should treat a work history that is genuinely half and half. In practice the file has to be built around whichever setting the hours and the letter actually support, and a split history needs the breakdown documented rather than averaged.
Second, the in-home nurse aide. A hospital-trained aide hired by a family to work in a private residence looks like 33102 by training and reads as 44101 by setting, and the NOC’s own exclusion sends "personal care attendant - home care" to 44101. We can see that this is a live question rather than a settled one: an Access to Information release we hold of subject lines from IRCC’s Immigration Representatives mailbox includes three messages titled "Inquiry Regarding Hiring a Nurse Aide for In-Home Care," sent on 19 and 20 February 2026. The release lists the subject lines, not the answers, so we cannot tell you what IRCC replied. What it does tell you is that licensed representatives were taking this exact boundary to IRCC directly in 2026, which is a reasonable sign the published guidance does not settle it.
Third, reopening. IRCC has not published a date for the Home Care Worker pilots to reopen. The eligibility page does say "the stream for applicants not working in Canada will open at a later date," but gives no date, and the pilots landing page still shows both streams closed as of this run. IRCC’s own pages are not fully consistent here: the apply page still carries cap language tied to March 31, 2026 that the December 19, 2025 notice overtook. Confirm the current position before relying on it, and do not let anyone sell you a 44101 PR plan built on a reopening date nobody has published.
NOC 33102 and 44101 in British Columbia
Two BC specifics change the picture for care workers in Metro Vancouver.
The first is a registry condition that catches people after the job offer. BC PNP’s Skills Immigration Program Guide, in its June 10, 2026 version, states: "If you have been offered a job that is classified under NOC 33102, you must be on the BC Care Aide & Community Health Worker registry." A valid job offer in a Burnaby or Richmond care home is not enough on its own; registration is part of the eligibility, and it takes time that applicants rarely budget for.
The second is the band. The guide lists eligible NOCs in TEER 0, 1, 2 and 3 for the Skilled Worker and Health Authority streams, and states that "only occupations classified under NOC TEER 0, 1, 2 or 3 are eligible for consideration under the EEBC option." A home support worker in 44101 is outside that band, which means BC PNP’s main skilled streams are not a workaround for a TEER 4 code. Our BC PNP update for 2026 covers what changed for health care workers, and the provincial nominee program page explains how a nomination fits with a federal application. Stream rules change at each intake, so confirm the current guide before building a plan on one stream.
Frequently asked questions about NOC 33102 and NOC 44101
Is a PSW TEER 3 or 4?
A personal support worker is TEER 3 when the work is done inside a hospital, nursing home or other care facility, which is NOC 33102, and TEER 4 when the same care is given in a client’s private residence, which is NOC 44101. The job title is identical in both cases, so the setting described in your employment letter is what decides the TEER level.
Which TEER is NOC 33102?
NOC 33102 is a TEER 3 occupation, which places it inside the TEER 0 to 3 band that the Federal Skilled Worker Program and the Canadian Experience Class both require, so it clears the skill-level requirement for Express Entry while NOC 44101 at TEER 4 does not. IRCC’s own TEER table describes TEER 3 as "Occupations that usually require a college diploma apprenticeship training of less than 2 years, or more than 6 months of on-the-job training."
Is NOC 44101 eligible for PR in Canada?
NOC 44101 is a TEER 4 occupation, so it does not qualify for the Federal Skilled Worker Program or the Canadian Experience Class on its own, and it is not on the Express Entry healthcare and social services category list. Its dedicated permanent residence route is the home support stream of the Home Care Worker Immigration pilots, which IRCC closed to new applications and, per its December 19, 2025 notice, did not reopen in March 2026.
What is the NOC code for a personal support worker in long-term care?
A personal support worker in a long-term care home falls under NOC 33102, nurse aides, orderlies and patient service associates, because that code’s official lead statement covers workers employed in hospitals, nursing homes and assisted care facilities for the elderly. If you split your time between a facility and home visits, the hours have to be documented separately rather than averaged into one code, because home visits belong to NOC 44101.
Is NOC 33102 in demand for Canadian immigration?
NOC 33102 is treated as a priority occupation in the sense that matters for an application: IRCC’s current healthcare and social services category list, on a page last updated June 22, 2026, includes nurse aides, orderlies and patient service associates, which means targeted Express Entry rounds can invite candidates in that occupation. That is a selection fact rather than a labour-market forecast, and IRCC can change which occupations sit in a category without notice, so confirm the list before you plan around it.
What are the recent changes to NOC 33102?
The code itself and its duties still sit in NOC 2021 Version 1.0, which is the version IRCC tells applicants to use, so what has changed recently is not the classification but the programs attached to it: 33102 appears on IRCC’s current healthcare and social services category list, is named on the select TEER 3 list that makes a spouse eligible for an open work permit, and may count as relevant prior experience for the home support stream of the Home Care Worker pilots even though it cannot be the job-offer occupation. Check the official NOC page and the relevant IRCC page for the version and date in force when you apply.
What is NOC 44101?
NOC 44101 is the TEER 4 unit group for home support workers, caregivers and related occupations, meaning workers who provide personal care and companionship for seniors, people with disabilities and convalescent clients in the client’s own residence rather than in a facility. The official lead statement puts the setting in writing: these workers "provide care in the client’s residence, where they may also reside." It covers titles such as home support worker, live-in caregiver for seniors and personal care attendant for home care, and it excludes home child care providers, who belong in 44100.
Related Posts
Express Entry NOC Code Mistakes After ITA: What Nanda v Canada 2026 FC 649 Means: what the Federal Court said about changing or defending your declared occupation after an invitation to apply.
Express Entry Category-Based Selection in 2026: which categories exist, which occupations sit in each one, and how a targeted draw reaches a lower score.
Home Child Care Provider Pilot: Is the Caregiver Path to Permanent Residence Still Open in 2026?: the current status of the caregiver pilots and what applicants already in the queue should expect.
Three signs your care worker NOC code needs a professional read: your employment letter names a job title but never says where the care was given, your work history mixes facility shifts with home visits inside the same job, or you were told your long-term care years are useless for a home support application. Each of those is a classification question rather than a form-filling question, and Ansari Immigration will tell you when the honest answer is that the application you want is not available yet. The firm is led by a licensed RCIC regulated by CICC, practicing since 2019, who teaches immigration law at three colleges and trains practicing RCICs. Flat, transparent fees quoted upfront.
Which code did your employer put on your job offer, 33102 or 44101? Post it below with general details only; seeing how employers actually word these helps everyone reading this.
This article is for general information only. It is not legal advice. Program criteria, requirements, processing times, and selection approaches can change without notice. Always confirm details on official government websites or consult a licensed Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant (RCIC) for advice specific to your situation.
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