Intake of permanent residents increases due to acute labour shortages - Aptechvisa

by aman sharma Canada Immigration,Canada PR Visa

The number of individuals applying to become permanent residents of Canada has increased 87% since the beginning of the year, from 143,000 in 2020 to 267,000, despite travel restrictions related to COVID-19. Sean Fraser, Canada's immigration minister, declared at a news conference in mid-November, before significant attention was devoted to the Omicron COVID variation that the government was "on course to exceed its objective of giving permanent residency to over 400,000 this year."

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Mr. Fraser is also willing to raise immigration targets for next year, which are presently set at 411,000. While Omicron's recent emergence may temporarily limit permanent resident inflows, the impact of this variant on persons who have just entered the nation should be mitigated by strong vaccine uptake in the country's ten largest Census metro regions (CMAs). Over the last five years, they have collectively accepted 80% of permanent residents to Canada.

One out of three permanent residents live in Toronto

Toronto continues to attract the biggest percentage of permanent residents admitted to Canada, despite being the second least affordable CMA in the country (behind Vancouver) according to the Royal Bank's home affordability metric. The percentage of permanent residents who choose TO has consistently climbed over the last five years, from 27.5 percent in 2016 to 36 percent year to date in 2021.

While Toronto continues to draw the greatest number of newcomers to Canada, there is evidence that the CMA's high housing prices are causing a growing number of newcomers to relocate to the GTA's commuter-shed. The number of permanent residents coming in the Toronto CMA has increased by +3.1 percent this year compared to the first nine months of pre-pandemic 2019, while the number of permanent residents entering in one of the eight CMAs neighboring to Toronto has increased by +43 percent.

The fact that over the last five years, the outflow of people from Toronto to other regions of the province has averaged 45,000, more than double the number of people who left the CMA in the previous five years, supports this evidence of population change.

In 2022, Vancouver will witness unprecedented inflows

It's hardly surprising that the CMA has drawn an unprecedented year-to-date inflow of permanent residents, given the "pull" of Vancouver's recent robust trend of job growth, as mentioned in Snapshot #22, and the "push" of mainland China's escalating intervention in Hong Kong. The city has welcomed 35,000 permanent inhabitants in the last nine months, up 17 percent from the pre-pandemic record of 30,400 in 2019. As a result of this high increase in permanent inhabitants, Vancouver has risen to second place among Canadian cities in terms of permanent residents, up from third place in 2018.

Quebec reopens the door after partially closing it in 2019.

Between 2009 and 2018, Montreal attracted the second biggest share of permanent residents in the country, but in the last three years, it has fallen behind Vancouver in terms of permanent inhabitants. Following Quebec Premier Francois Legault's commitment to cut the number of immigrants to the province by 20%, the number of permanent immigrants to the province fell by -20.1 percent in 2019 and -39 percent in 2020, aggravated by the commencement of COVID-19.

As a result of the limits on immigration, the province's influx of skilled people has been severely limited, with the job vacancy rate reaching a record high of 7.3 percent in September of this year.

The city of Montreal has been hit the most by the decrease in net migration. Since the beginning of the year, the net number of permanent residents in Montréal has decreased by -6,700, compared with a decrease of -5,700 for the entire province. Recognizing that the province as a whole, and Montreal in particular, was suffering from a severe labour shortage, Premier Legault announced on November 30th a $3.9 billion plan to recruit 170,000 new workers in three priority sectors: information technology, engineering, and construction. It's worth noting that, while total employment in Quebec has increased by +3.4 percent in the last year, construction hiring has decreased by -5.6 percent.

The impact of increased hiring fuelled by rising energy costs appears to be boosting permanent resident inflows in Calgary, Edmonton, and Regina. Furthermore, this tendency is expected to continue as energy prices rise in response to higher global economic growth.

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