IRCC Minister Transition Binder 2025-05

Economic Immigration

Context

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) manages economic immigration programs to support the development of a strong Canadian economy and ensure that the benefits of immigration are shared across all regions.

Background

• Permanent economic immigration programs contribute to Canada’s economic prosperity by attracting and retaining high-skilled workers, entrepreneurs, and self-employed individuals, as well as workers in essential occupations such as home care and agricultural and agrifood, who will contribute to Canada’s critical occupational shortages and long term economic needs. Specific regional programs work to include partners and stakeholders in the selection, attraction, and retention of new immigrants in all regions and spread the benefits of immigration across Canada. These programs are designed to complement each other, and to meet Canada’s diverse labour market and economic development needs.
• The Express Entry system manages applications for the three Federal High-Skilled Programs—Canadian Experience Class, Federal Skilled Worker Program, and Federal Skilled Trades Program— as well as a segment of the Provincial Nominee Program. It invites prospective applicants to apply based on a points system that evaluates key human capital attributes. This model has enhanced IRCC’s ability to select candidates with the strongest potential for success in the Canadian labour market.
• Permanent economic immigration represents the largest share of the 2025–2027 Immigration Levels Plan. In 2025, economic immigration will account for 58.8% of permanent immigration to Canada, rising to 61.7% in 2027.

Impacts

Labour Market Impacts

• Immigration has been the driving force behind Canada’s labour supply for many years. During the 2010s, over four-fifths of the growth in Canada’s labour force came from immigration. While not the only solution, immigration plays a key role in responding to labour market shortages. In 2023, immigrants represented 23% of the Canadian population and 28.9% of the Canadian labour force. In general, economic principal applicants have median employment earnings that are well above the median for other groups of immigrants, and for Canadians as a whole. For example, whereas the median Canadian employment income in 2021 was $40,870, individuals admitted through Express Entry managed programs in 2020 had median employment earnings of $58,900 in 2021.
• Recent efforts have made permanent economic immigration programming more responsive to changing national, regional, and sector-specific labour market needs, while building on the high human capital approach that has been a hallmark of Canada’s successful economic immigration system. This has included the introduction of category-based selection for the Federal High-Skilled Programs, which allows specific applicants to be invited to apply for permanent residence based on labour market needs, such as for French-proficient and bilingual workers or individuals with work experience in high-demand occupations (e.g., in areas such as health care and social services, trades, and education).
• Regional programs test innovative solutions and address diverse regional labour needs. Under the Provincial Nominee Program, the number of economic immigrants settling outside of Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia has increased, from 11% in 1998 to 37% in 2024. As of 2024, it was the main source of economic immigration for most provinces and territories.

Current Programs

The vast majority of economic immigrants are selected through Core Programs which focus on longstanding human capital factors such as level of education, official language proficiency, and skilled work experience. The core programs also respond to national and regional economic and labour market needs such as expected occupational shortages and strategic objectives, including Francophone immigration, allowing for a more targeted approach to support the economy.

Federal Programs (The 2025 admissions target for federal programs is 99,180)

• Federal High Skilled (managed through Express Entry, which includes a ranking system):
  • Federal Skilled Worker Program: Selects workers on the basis of skilled work experience and high human capital.
  • Canadian Experience Class: Selects workers, including former international students and temporary foreign workers, on the basis of Canadian skilled work experience.
  • Federal Skilled Trades Program: Facilitates the immigration of skilled tradespersons in certain industries and sectors.
• In June 2023, category-based selection launched in Express Entry, which allows the Department to target invitations to candidates in the Express Entry pool who are eligible under categories established by the Minister to meet identified economic goals.

Regional Programs (The 2025 admissions target for regional programs is 122,000 and 5,000 for Community Pilots).

• Provincial Nominee Program: jointly administered immigration program, which attracts and retains new immigrants to all provinces and territories (except Quebec and Nunavut) to address regional labour market, demographic and economic development needs, while distributing the benefits of economic immigration across Canada.
• Quebec economic immigration: under the Canada-Quebec Accord, Quebec selects the economic immigrants destined to the province, in both skilled worker and business programs, while the federal government remains responsible for determining admissibility of all immigrants to Canada and issue permanent resident visas.
• Atlantic Immigration Program: an employer-driven program to help employers hire, settle and retain skilled foreign workers and international graduates from an Atlantic Canadian institution to support regional economic and demographic growth.

Federal Business Class (The 2025 admissions target for federal business programs is 2,000).

• Start-Up Visa Program: seeks to attract entrepreneurs with the potential to establish innovative business in Canada. Foreign entrepreneurs first secure support for their business concept from a private-sector ˝Designated Entity˝ before submitting an application for permanent residence. New application intake in this program is capped in order to help address the application backlog and associated client wait times.
• Self-Employed Programs: selects individuals with world-class experience in the arts or athletics who can make a significant contribution to Canada’s cultural fabric. New application intake in this program is paused in order to help reduce the application backlog.

Pilot Programs and Targeted Measures

• A smaller but significant share of economic immigrants are selected via pilot programs geared to specific regions, occupations or sectors, or via targeted measures introduced in response to unique circumstances. The 2025 admissions target for all pilot programs and targeted measures listed below is 10,920.
• Regional:
  • Rural Community Immigration Pilot and Francophone Community Immigration Pilot (2024): are employer- and community-driven programs that equip small, rural, and remote communities across Canada with the tools to address critical labour shortages in priority sectors and to increase the number of French-speaking immigrants working and settling in Francophone-minority communities outside of Quebec.
• Sectoral, Occupational:
  • Agri-Food Immigration Pilot (2020–2025) tests an industry-specific approach to helping address longstanding labour needs by providing a pathway to permanent residence for experienced, full-time, non-seasonal workers in year-round occupations in the mushroom and greenhouse crop production, meat processing, and livestock raising industries. The pilot reached its intake cap of 1,010 for 2025 and is now closed to new applications. It will sunset in May 2025.
  • Home Care Worker Immigration Pilots (Child Care and Home Support) (2025–2030) provides a direct pathway to permanent residence for qualified workers with the skills and intent to work in a home care occupation in Canada. The pilots opened to applications on March 31, 2025, and reached their annual online cap for the year the same day. A small proportion of 2025 intake spaces was made available to undocumented home care workers. The overall intake cap is 2,750 spaces for principal applicants, per year, per pilot with provision for approximately 5% of spaces for undocumented home care workers in the first year.
• Targeted Measures:
  • Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot (2023–2025) (2021–open until intake cap of 500 applications is reached) supports Canadian employers in finding skilled refugees to meet their labour needs.

Recent Developments

• The 2025–2027 Immigration Levels Plan reduces admissions in all immigration classes, including economic immigration, while prioritizing the transition of temporary residents to permanent residence.
• In 2024, the Department met its francophone admission target of 6% of permanent resident admissions outside of Quebec. The economic class has been the main pathway to achieve this objective, including through leveraging the Federal High Skilled and Provincial Nominee Programs as core drivers of Francophone immigration outside Quebec in 2024.

Upcoming Milestones

• Lower economic immigration admissions target of 232,150 in 2025, as part of overall reductions outlined in the Levels Plan. The majority of economic immigration admissions will come from Federal High Skilled programs and the Provincial Nominee Program, with a focus on those who are already in-Canada as temporary residents.
• The Francophone admissions target will increase to 8.5% in 2025, 9.5% in 2025, and 10% in 2027, as outlined in the 2025–2027 Immigration Levels Plan. The economic class has been, and is expected to continue to be, the main pathway for French-speaking and bilingual immigration outside of Quebec.

Key Service Delivery Statistics

Permanent Residents: Federal High Skilled – Data up to 2025 (Jan to Feb)

Wait Times for New Applicants (in months)

Application wait times by line of business are reflected on their own scale and are shown by quarter for comparative purposes.

Inventory Compared to Remaining 2025 Admissions^{Note *}

Current Inventory vs. Planned Admissions

FSW:

Planned admissions Mar-Dec 2025: 24,200
All inventory to be processed in 2025 (with exceptions)

CEC:

Planned admissions Mar-Dec 2025: 43,700
All inventory to be processed in 2025 (with exceptions)

(PR = Permanent Resident; CEC = Canadian Experience Class; FSW = Federal Skilled Worker)

Permanent Residents: Provincial, Territorial and Regional Programs – Data up to 2025 (Jan to Feb)

Wait Times for New Applicants (in months)

Rising wait times for PNP Base and AIP, reflecting surplus nominations.

Application wait times by line of business are reflected on their own scale and are shown by quarter for comparative purposes.

Inventory Compared to Remaining 2025 Admissions

Current Inventory vs. Planned Admissions

PNP = Provincial Nominee Program. AIP= Athlantic Immigration Program. RNIP = Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot. RCIP= Rural Community Immigration Pilot. FCIP = Francophone Community Immigration Pilot.

Permanent Residents: Quebec Economic – Data up to 2025 (Jan to Feb)

Wait Times for New Applicants (in months)

Quebec Skilled Worker intake and output aligned, while Quebec’s new plan includes few spaces for Quebec Business compared to inventory.

Application wait times by line of business are reflected on their own scale and are shown by quarter for comparative purposes.

Inventory Compared to Remaining 2025 Admissions

Current Inventory vs. Planned Admissions

QSW: Quebec Skilled Workers.

Permanent Residents: Pilot Programs and Other Economic – Data up to 2025 (Jan to Feb)

Wait Times for New Applicants (in months)

Inventory Compared to Remaining 2025 Admissions

Current Inventory vs. Planned Admissions

SUV = Start-up Visa
EMPP= Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot.

Federal Economic Other includes SUV, EMPP, Agrifood, Caregivers and Regularization Public Policy.