80% of Express Entry candidates in the pool are eligible for the FSWP

Key Highlights:

• Overview
• Express Entry Pool Candidates
• Express Entry in 2021

According to official figures released by the IRCC, the immigration candidates under the Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP) make up about 80% of applicants in the Express Entry pool, followed by those from the Canadian Experience Class (CEC).

Express Entry Pool Candidates

The Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) recently provided the CIC News statistics regarding the Express Entry pool. This comes a day before it held 2022’s first Express Entry draw, which was only for Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) candidates.

Out of over 194,000 candidates in the Express Entry pool currently waiting for an Invitation to Apply (ITA) for PR, around 154,000 were from FSWP, 38,000 from CEC, 577 from the Federal Skilled Trades Program (FSTP) and 344 were the PNP applicants invited.

Below is a table depicting the programs and number of candidates in those that are in the Express Entry pool:

Express Entry in 2021

The IRCC did not invite FSWP candidates since the start of 2021. That year, it only focussed on CEC and PNP candidates as most of them were currently in Canada and thus would not be affected by international travel restrictions.

For the first six months that year, the country barred new PR holders who had applied from their home nation to come into the country due to several measures to tackle the pandemic.

Inviting only CEC and PNP candidates continued even after the restrictions were lifted. IRCC stopped holding draws for CEC applicants from September, only inviting PNP candidates bi-monthly.