September 2024: State of the Express Entry pool

After a busy August, and a historic number of draws throughout July, Canada’s Express Entry system has seen changes in the composition of the candidate pool—and in the newcomers who have received invitations to apply (ITAs) for permanent residence (PR).

To better inform candidates within the Express Entry pool, and those interested in Canadian immigration, the following breaks down the current composition of the pool—as well as tracking cut-off scores for different draws throughout the last month.

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The current state of the Express Entry pool

What draws occurred in August?

August saw five Express Entry draws throughout the month, issuing more than 10,000 ITAs as Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) returned to the established pattern of holding Express Entry draws every other week.

The draws that occurred in August reflect changes announced by the Minister of Immigration Marc Miller. For example, the prevalence of CEC and PNP draws follows statements made by Miller last March, when the Minister declared his intention to pursue more “domestic” draws through the federal immigration system. Miller added in the same press conference that he would request his provincial counterparts to do the same with Canada’s PNPs.

The rationale for this move was to reduce burdens on housing stock, and potential impacts on affordability by not adding new immigrants to Canada. Rather, the department is working on prioritizing people are already in Canada as temporary residents (primarily those on a work permit), who are eligible to transition to PR. This will also help IRCC meet its annual immigration target for permanent residents.

Additionally, Canada has recently emphasized the importance of Francophone immigration to the country, announcing that it will increase the percentage allocation of Francophone immigrants destined for provinces outside of Quebec within yearly targets. This percentage allocation will increase from 6% this year, to 7% in 2025, and 8% in 2026. This year has seen seven French language proficiency draws, issuing over 19,000 ITAs so far in 2024.

What is the distribution of scores in the pool currently?

As of August 27th (the date of the most recent draw at the time of writing), the breakdown of scores within the Express Entry pool:

The above data has also been presented as a bar graph for easier visualization:

How does each score compare to the overall distribution?

The below table takes the top end of each CRS score range, and assigns it a percentile with the assumption that the top-most score will contain the total number of candidates within the score range (for example, within the 0-300 score range, it is assumed that candidates with score of 300 have 5,490 candidates (the total number of candidates in that score range, subtracted by one) in the Express Entry pool with lower scores than them).

As we can see from the current distribution, half of the candidates in the Express Entry pool currently have a CRS score of 420 or lower.

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