demographics
PROJECTING A SQUAREROOT RECOVERY IN IMMIGRATION
A return to pre-pandemic targets by 2023 may be the likeliest path for Canadian immigration.
A question that is often pondered as we progress through the Great Suppression is, when will Canadian immigration return to levels consistent with the national targets initially laid out by the federal government in 2017 and updated yearly since then? Though there is much speculation about this, there has been little in the way of concrete estimates for the near-term future. We decided to give it a shot. While acknowledging that there are myriad factors inf luencing future levels of immigration to Canada—including the continued evolution of Covid-19 and shifts in age- and sex-specific labour force
participation rates, to name a couple—our assessment is for immigration to increase from its current level (195,000 immigrants in 2020, down 57% versus 2019) back to trend by 2023, at 355,000 immigrants. This temporal pattern of change is consistent with a steady return of both the national unemployment rate and the employment rate back to pre-pandemic levels. Of course, this is but one of many potential outcomes: should immigration return to trend more slowly, the result will be a national labour market that tightens relatively quickly, and vice versa.
THREE YEARS TO RETURN TO OUR DEMOGRAPHIC NORM
400,000
355,000
360,000
350,000
300,000
290,000
250,000
220,000
200,000
195,000
150,000
100,000
85,000
50,000
20,000
0
-30,000
-50,000
-60,000
-100,000
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 HISTORICAL PROJECTED
IMMIGRATION
NON PERM. RESIDENTS CHANGE
EMIGRATION
SOURCE: DEMOGRAPHIC ESTIMATES COMPENDIUM, STATISTICS CANADA; PROJECTION MODEL, RENNIE INTELLIGENCE DATA: ANNUAL ESTIMATES AND PROJECTIONS OF INTERNATIONAL MOBILITY FLOWS, CANADA
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