CIP 185 - Episode 7 - Your Job Title, Your Score - Who Gets the Boost?
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[00:00:00] [00:01:00] Two workers both earn exactly $45 an hour. Same wage, same city, same year. [00:02:00] One of them, starting today, gets a significant CRS boost just because of the job they hold. The other gets nothing. Same money, completely different result in the express entry pool. That is the high-wage occupation factor. And today, we're gonna tell you exactly how it works, which side of that line your occupation sits on, and what you should do before it arrives, which could be any day now with no advanced notice
Yeah, I'd like to say a few... Yeah. Hi, Mark. I'd like to say a few things just at the top because we are talking about this kind of headline of, oh, your job title could get you permanent residence, and it's a little bit more nuanced than that. It always is. And this is something we've been talking about right from the beginning, that there is, there's some low-hanging fruit.
There's a gap in terms of what IRCC has taken a look at in the data to see certain [00:03:00] categories of people who've come as permanent residents actually have performed better economically in the past than others. And so this is where it's coming from. This is the data behind the high-wage occupation factor, but the mechanism has some consequences, and that's what we want to talk about today.
All right. So let's take a look at this, this, what I guess we could call the old CRS system and essentially why it ignored your paycheck. Mm-hmm. So in the past, basically time was rewarded. Time at task was rewarded, and if we take a look at the CRS points grid, we see for a single applicant, so one that's applying on their own, that if you've worked for one year, you've got 40 points for high-skilled Canadian work experience.
Once you hit 52 weeks, you've got that. If you keep going and you hit your second year of high-skilled Canadian work experience, you're gonna get 53 points. Third year is [00:04:00] gonna be 64 points. Fourth year is gonna be 72 points. Five years is gonna be 80 points. Of course, people have to weigh that against their age, right?
So if they have now passed their 30th birthday, there's a give and take in terms of these points. But the key thing under the current system is that these are the same points across the board. It does not matter if you are working as a food supervisor at $17 an hour or if you're working as a petroleum engineer at $90 an hour, you get exactly the same CRS boost based on time at task, based on the number of years of high-skilled work experience you have.
And IRCC has said, well, the system rewards quantity not quality of Canadian high-skilled work experience, and this is where they feel they're missing out on being able to kind of reward or incentivize the groups of people that they really want to perform highly. Yeah. And you can't ignore it. Often we can look at statistics and [00:05:00] say, well, they're kind of being manipulated a little bit.
And I guess as we go forward, you and I will talk a little bit more about some of the figures they use to justify this. But you can't, you know, you can't discount the reality. These numbers are real. So let's, let's take a look at this research, Alicia, that actually changed everything. Mm-hmm. And so IRCC's been doing long-term studies on economic outcomes for Express Entry applicants, PNP-based, as well as just the straight Express Entry-based, and they've been looking at pre-landing earnings.
So they are taking a look at people who came as temporary residents, so either workers or students, or students who turned into workers, and what their pre-landing earnings were. And they said, well, okay, if people earned $100,000 or more when they were here as a temporary resident, then after landing, those people performed the best.
They had 162% of their salary. So those ones [00:06:00] were for sure the winners. Then they took a look at the next bracket of earners, and they said people who are within the 50,000 to 74,000 range showed a little bit of a premium, a 36% premium. But Here were the people who performed the worst or not as strong, and that was those who earned bef- below $25,000 as a temporary resident.
And that cohort performed much more poorly compared to people who had never worked in Canada. So there was a, an 18% gap, and this is what IRCC was looking at. And we can talk about why that might be. That was one of the studies. The other study was looking at job offer wages and then the post-landing earnings.
And so back when we had job offers, and we had job offers for a long time under express entry until 2025, immigrants who landed with senior management job offers earned median weekly wages of about [00:07:00] $3,616 and, and that was back in 2021. And those with non-senior management offers earned about $1,686, and those with no job offers were lower at $1,178.
And so this is why IRCC is saying, well, pre-landing wage is one of the strongest predictors of how well an immigrant does after landing, and the CRS is not capturing that at all. And one thing we were talking about too, and I think one of the studies also refers to, is the reason that people who are earning less might have this big dip after landing is probably because they're going back to school and they're re-educating.
And so they stop working because now they're a full-time student. And in the long run, many of those people will have higher wages, but it takes a number of years to then catch up in terms of employment earnings. [00:08:00] Yeah. Okay. We had those four profiles. Let's continue with this, Alicia, because I think the, the most stark impact it's going to have, uh, that, that's out there, it will be on Charlotte.
So this is where, at least in our view, there's a problem. And we talk a lot, Alicia, about this focus, this hyper-focus on high wage, high wage, high wage, which completely discounts the actual worth and impact that the occupation may have on other factors, not just how much they're paying in income tax. And so that's one thing that's been kinda thrown out, I guess, the baby with the bathwater.
But Charlotte is the one that's most significantly impacted by this. You'll remember that Charlotte, she's 27, she's a food service supervisor, which is a tier-three position. Uh, she's got a Canadian diploma, two years of Canadian experience, and she's only making $17 an hour. So under today's rules, arguably she'd be the best of the [00:09:00] four because of she's young, g- has Canadian education, which all the time they indicated that that Canadian education was a, the strongest indicator of success.
I still remember those discussions I had with Minister Fraser. Uh, and that was just during the pan- just, I think it was during the pandemic, right, as it was kind of in full swing, and he was talking about how these international students are so important for us. They're the ones that are most likely to integrate.
They're, they're labor market-ready, Alicia, because they've got Canadian education. But in her case, she was young. The, the study bonus, she got the extra points for having studied in Canada. The extra f- what is it? 53 points, I guess, for two years of a Canadian experience, and essentially going through each of these phases, even with a valid job offer.
Uh, she, in many cases, sometimes they have LMIA-based work permits, which can then give even more bonus points. But under this new high-wage occupation, these [00:10:00] factors, her position virtually deteriorates. So it's obviously below the H- HWO threshold. She gets no boost for her experience because she's not in one of those higher-wage, uh, occupations.
Job offer as well, from what we can see, and we'll get into the, the, the, the job offer issue, uh, n- in our n- next episode, episode eight, in detail, but the job offer's not in a qualifying NOC, and- Yeah, all the newcomers that are not even here without any Canadian experience would theoretically, based on what we know about the calculation, those high-wage roles would pass her by.
Yeah. And so the same changes that lift Eric and Amal, our previous, uh, case scenario individuals, they downgrade Charlotte. And there's no version, and there never is, Alicia, but there's no version where everyone will gain equally. The, the reality is they are in a situation where they have to pick winners and losers, and, uh, unfortunately for [00:11:00] Charlotte, she's in this large cohort of people that, through no fault of her own, there's just a surplus of them, which then results in them saying, "Look, this magical 5%, we wanna get our temporary resident population down to 5%.
We're only gonna allow in 380,000 total permanent residents," and so something has to give. And what they saw is the ones that are paying the, the fewest taxes, well, they're not as valuable to us now as those that are paying higher taxes, regardless of the impact that occupation actually has in practical terms for Canada.
So- Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and this is not -- Charlotte is not a rare profile, right? We talked in the last episode about the fact that there's about 73,000 people. There's a huge number of essential workers who kept this country running through the years, and especially people who are in those helping professions, right?
So just because the system is not [00:12:00] paying them highly for what they do, they are performing essential roles. They're performing caregiving roles. They're performing educator roles. They're performing all sorts of health occupation roles. So not the doctors, but the people who are kind of in the trenches and, and doing the, the heavy labor work.
And those people are the ones who are going to lose out because the system is not structurally reinforcing the wages of the people that we tend to devalue. And so this is going to be probably a little bit of a self-reinforcing issue going forward. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So here's... Realistically, here's the most important thing to understand about this factor, and when we're talking about this high-wage occupation The, the, there's not a lot of coverage on this.
At least I don't think it's been quite precise when, when people are talking about how this works. It is occupation-based. [00:13:00] Like, we get hung up on the wages, but realistically, what does it boil down to? It's occupation-based, not individual-based. So IRCC will not assess how much you personally earn. They'll look at your NOC code.
They'll find the national median wage for that occupation, and right now it looks like it's going to be drawn from Stats Canada and the SDC job bank, the, the wages that are there. And then they'll compare it against one of three thresholds, you could call them tiers, you could call them multipliers, basically that are above the national median for all workers.
Now, that's all workers across the country. So if your occupation's median clears that threshold, you qualify. If it does not, you do not. So your personal paycheck, I guess is what we're saying, is, is pretty much irrelevant So when we look at this, we ask ourselves, well, wh- why? Like, why take a national average?
You know, if someone is actually being paid more, then [00:14:00] under your rules, then they are gonna be paying more taxes, so are they not more valuable? So I guess theoretically, if you had a, a food service supervisor, or let's level up and say a restaurant manager, and your restaurant is a, what do they call that?
Michelin level three or something, like it's the top-tier recognized restaurant in the world, and you are managing that restaurant, and they're paying you $250,000 to manage it, well, are you not valuable? Like, a- are your taxes any less than someone who's under one of these occupations? But Alicia, we always have to have equality.
We have to make sure that no one is being unfairly prejudiced, except Charlotte, of course. She can be prejudiced, and anyone that's in her cohort. But essentially, this design choice, they've kind of broken it down into three, at least the, the public-facing information. So one is gender disparity. [00:15:00] So s- uh, there's, there's no secret that women in, in s- sometimes the same occupation as men earn less.
Uh, on individual wage test, it, it basically tries to... It, it encodes that gap into the immigration system, so they're trying to avoid that. Uh, next is the geographic disparity. And an example, obviously, a nurse in Alberta earns differently than a nurse in New Brunswick. I think more, I think is what they're trying to get at here.
And the national occupational medians kinda neutralize that regional variation. And then the final part is integrity risk, which I get it. Like, there's so much fraud. It's so frustrating 'cause a lot of this policy is, is based on two things. One's politics, and the other's fraud. And, uh, sometimes those are, are their bedfellows.
They, they kinda work together in concert to making changes that I think really frustrate me, but it is what it is. So there's an integrity risk. And a wage stated on a work permit or on a job [00:16:00] offer can be manipulated. It's true. You know, we see on the job bank food service supervisor occupations right off the bat when they made those changes to restrict high and low wage to this gross-up figure for provinces when it was at $36.
We'd see food service supervisor, $36 an hour being advertised on the job bank. It didn't take job bank long to catch that and say, "Ah, this is not genuine." I guess, obviously, like I said, the case can be made if it's this M- Michelin class restaurant, and the supervisor's making $150,000 maybe. Uh, like who knows?
But, but in general, this is a, this is a real risk. And so a NOC-level national median is an objective kind of external benchmark that is difficult to, to game essentially And so you have... No, go ahead. Yeah, please. Yeah. So I think structurally the problem that is going to happen is that when you look at [00:17:00] NOC codes that are historically undervalued, right?
The helping professions where we bake in an undervaluing of that role, that's gonna get perpetuated. But in terms of how they are implementing this high-wage occupation factor, they're using the data to say, "Okay, we know we're missing this cohort of people. They tend to do better economically, therefore we want to reward that with the CRS."
One of the ways they're doing that, of course, is to average it, right? So just like you said, Mark, when we talk about people who are at a Michelin star restaurant and managing that entire restaurant, they're, they're gonna be at the higher end, and then you're gonna have everybody who's kind of in a mom-and-pop restaurant.
And there's nothing saying it's worse, but they're not gonna get paid as much. But what's gonna happen is all those figures are gonna go into that NOC code, they're gonna average it. IRCC is gonna say, "Here are the bands. Here is the national median for this NOC." They're gonna have to set it for a certain period of time, I [00:18:00] assume over a year, and they're gonna use the previous year's data.
And then they're gonna look at, okay, what are the multiplying factors from there? Yeah, and that's a good point, too, Alicia, because how often are they gonna reset these levels? We know wages increase. They go up. So what, what is the going to be their, their anchor for this? And how frequently will they make the changes?
Will it be yearly? You know, will it be quarterly? I don't think it'll be quarterly. That would be a nightmare. But, you know, they do it for ESDC and the LMIAs, right? The unemployment rates. Yeah. They update those quarterly. I was so shocked. I remember here in Lethbridge when it was, like, 7.6 or something, unemployment rates in Lethbridge, when the previous quarter it was 5.7.
I'm like, what the heck? Like, how does this jump two points? And then- Yeah ... lo and behold, the next quarter is back d- down to 5.9%. And so what's interesting with the cyclical nature, the one thing I could point out was kids in school. And so, excuse me, if you're in school, you're reporting that you're not working [00:19:00] full time and you're unemployed.
And then when you get out of school, all these summer jobs open up, and then everybody's employed and, ugh. Anyways, it is, it is what it is. But let's, let's flip over here and actually take a look at these, the three multipliers themselves. You know, when we look at this, there are... Essentially, it creates three tiers or it creates three multipliers, as we use.
We're trying to not confuse everybody with T-E-E-R versus T-I-E-R, so we'll let the government describe them how they want to. But for our purposes, these are multipliers, so individual categories that have corresponding, uh, bonus points for CRS. Now, what we wanna make very clear, despite what everybody's saying out there, we do not know exactly what this is gonna look like.
We don't know how many points are gonna be allocated for having 1.3 times or 1.5 times or two, two times. We don't know. We... Ultimately, they're, they're gonna weight things. They weigh- they need to weight them. To ensure that people in high wage are pretty much guaranteed an ITA, at [00:20:00] least in these categories, or have a significant boost, right?
It's really a boost, not something kinda nominal like a sibling in Canada or a two-year diploma that gives you 15 points. I suspect it's gonna be more in the line of those bonus 50 points, which they seem to like. But Alicia, we've seen executive level individuals who have job offers at that level. We saw 200 points being attributed to them, which was definitely a slam dunk for getting an ITA.
And we saw when Express Entry was first created, that they gave 600 points for anyone essentially with a, uh, with arranged offer, an LMIA-based work permit. So we'll have to see how this plays out. Now It's interesting because we've seen a lot of speculation about this. So we've got a good friend, uh, who, who, uh, shared with me his own calculations that they did within their firm, which suggested that maybe this high wage could be more aligned with $32.44 an hour.
And then we've saw other, other news [00:21:00] reports and, and other outlets, uh, suggesting that Stats Canada showed it was $30.77. Well, by the time this is released, and we'll talk a little bit about this in a second, but by the time it's released, you think about it, it's possible that these figures could have just naturally crept up, and now the wages for these occupations are higher.
So we'll have to see how this plays out. But this is kind of how the breakdown works. 1.3 times 1.52. And then we have some sample wages. You can kind of take it, uh, with a grain of salt, okay, here. So, uh, and, and occupations that could potentially fit into those categories. So these are for reference purposes only.
We are not guaranteeing that these things... Although I think we're pretty okay with physicians, senior managers, uh, engineering managers, petroleum engineers, judges, things like that. We're pretty confident that they're gonna get some points. And if they, if they're not the ones at the very top, excuse me, then I'm not sure who would be.
So those [00:22:00] 11 NOCs that we have here are just, uh, probably who else is on the list? Maybe commissioned, uh, police officers, managers of natural resources. These are just some examples. So that's the, the tier, uh, that's at the very top that, let's say, hypothetically, maybe they're the ones that get 200 points.
I don't know. Maybe it's 100, 50, and 25. We've seen in the past CRS, they seem to like 25 and, uh, 50 and 25 points, so maybe it's 100 for the 2.0Xers, 50 points for the 1.5ers, and 25 points for the 1.3 multipliers. We don't know. You can see here, Alicia, those in the 1.5 range are typically kind of your software engineers, designers.
Although, who knows what the world of software engineering is, is gonna look like in a, in a new AI kind of, uh, a new AI sphere. But financial managers, human resource managers, us, lawyers, pharmacists, nurse practitioners, university professors, construction [00:23:00] managers, p- police officers. So you kind of get, uh, even airline pilots kind of hit on that as well as mining engineers.
And then at the bottom, kind of at least that are going to be the lowest A multiplier or category that will get some points, you'd have to believe are going to be the registered nurses, the crane operators, ironworkers, steamfitters. So a lot of the trades, civil engineers, uh, high school teachers, things like that, firefighters.
So these are just some examples for people to kinda look at, but I think they're gonna be pretty accurate, Alicia. I think these categories and the occupations that we have broken down here are very, very good examples of probably what's to come. So these are kind of to be determined in IRCC's own documents that they've shared with us.
But the structure itself is, is confirmed. It's just understand the numbers are not, so we can speculate all we want, but at the end of the day, the most important thing is that, that you just take steps to start being ready and to start preparing. [00:24:00] Okay. Let's just take a look at the, the two levers, I guess we could say.
So there's two CRS levers, and, uh, when we're looking at determining how this high-wage occupations work, there's kind of two pathways. Once again, we are using all of the best available data, information that we have to try to explain how this works, but ultimately, there are still some uncertainties with this, okay?
So the theory, at least what has been laid out for us, is that you're gonna hit that HWO boost. I wonder if... HAWOO, HAWOO, Alicia, is that what it is? It's the HAWOO boost? Hoo, maybe the H is silent, I don't know. Anyways, that boost is gonna reach through either Canadian experience or a job offer or both, you know?
Or I guess probably both is probably... I, I don't think that would happen, but I think it's gonna be likely you can hit it [00:25:00] either through one or the other way, either having Canadian work experience in a high-wage occupation, and what have they described that as being? Well, basically candidates who have worked in Canada in a qualifying occupation, 'cause remember, you have to be...
This occupation's everything, isn't it, Alicia? Like- Yeah ... people get so hung up on the wage, but just focus on the occupation. One year at least, you receive those additional CRS points on top of your base Canadian work experience, 'cause it doesn't look like they're gonna remove the Canadian work experience points like we talked about before, but these are like booster chargers that will boost your CRS points, kinda like the other category exists right now.
And it will essentially, it'll scale which multiplier category depending upon your occupation, 1.3 times, 1.5 or 2. And then if we look at our past examples, we've got Amal and Ken. Well, they're already working in Canada, so there's a good chance they're gonna have a shot. Obviously, Charlotte gets the [00:26:00] shaft as always because her occupation isn't kind of in that range, but Alicia, how would you compare that to pathway B, I guess?
Yeah. And again, Mark, just like you said, this is not something that we know. Is it disjunctive or conjunctive? Are they going to do, you know, one or the other, or could you do A or B, so either would be open? Or are they only gonna go with A, are they only gonna go with B? And we'll talk more about that as more information becomes available.
But under pathway B, they're structuring it as having a valid job offer in a high-wage occupation. And so in the example they gave with Eric, he was overseas. He did not have Canadian high-skilled work experience yet. He was a senior manager with foreign work experience. And so if that's the case, then it all comes down to the definition of what is a job offer.
And I've gone on about this for a long time, and we will talk about this more in the next episode because it's a technical legal [00:27:00] definition of arranged employment, and it's embedded in the act and the regulations, and it's also embedded in the MIs. So it really depends on how they roll this out. But what they're looking at for pathway B is having some sort of valid job offer and having that high-wage occupation multiplying factor.
So that's, that's the second pathway. It's not as though you can use both, right? There's not gonna be a scenario where you can get double points for A and B, but we really have to see are they going to use A or B, or are they only gonna use A, are they only gonna be use B? So we'll have to see how it unfolds.
All right. Well, we've done before. Let's take a look at how the four faces of, of our, our profiles, Eric, Amal, Ken, and Charlotte shake down with this one new factor. One little tweak, how does it impact them? Mm-hmm. And IRCC has said in their examples that it will have a [00:28:00] significant impact, and so we have to believe that's probably true.
So Eric, because he has the highest wage multiplier in relative to what he had before, where he wasn't getting rewarded for the fact that he had two times the median wage, he's going to come out a winner because now he's got that job offer even though he didn't work in Canada in the past, and he's got that job offer for a multiplier in the high-wage occupation factor.
So he is going to benefit, and so the, the system is now structurally moving in his benefit, and that's a little bit different than, a little bit different than Ken. Ken, we've talked about Ken. He's a tradesperson. It really depends on how he's gonna do for language because we know that the base is rising in terms of language and education.
But as long as he's able to meet those higher education and language requirements, if he is getting that 1.3 times multiplying [00:29:00] factor, he is in a regulated trade. Hopefully, there's gonna be some sort of recognition of his certificate of qualification or red seal, then Ken might be a winner in this scenario as well.
Amal, we know she's rocking it. She's a physician. She's been in Canada. She has a massive amount of over two times or at least two times the multiplying factor, and therefore, because she's a physician, she's probably gonna have the best chance out of everybody, and that high-wage occupation factor is definitely gonna bring her to the very top as well.
And poor Charlotte, and this is, this is gonna be tough for a lot of people who have been working really hard for a number of years, who have come to Canada usually as students. They've paid three times international tuition fees to get their degree. Uh, once they've graduated, they're now really trying to work hard to get that Canadian high-skilled work experience.
And those are the people that if they were not super [00:30:00] strategic and fortunate of being in the right time at the right place, they may not be able to get that high-wage job at the end of the day. And so anybody in lower-wage jobs below the median are going to be severely disadvantaged when this new high-wage occupation CRS factor comes into play.
All right. I wanna just address what I'd call kind of the wage number problem, and I hinted at it before. So we, like I said, we- the numbers are going to change. They're gonna fluctuate. And probably a good way of illustrating this is just by talking about some of our, our colleagues have kinda come up with their own figures 'cause when, when you don't have all the, all the, uh, the, the finalized precise data, then you, you try to dig back into the raw data to, to come up with your own conclusions.
And we know that IRCC, when they're producing these slide decks and doing these presentations, they're often not dealing in real time. It's- they've, they've created the information. The [00:31:00] statistics they use, as we know, Alicia, sometimes are quite old. It takes time for those wheels of, of change to, to turn.
And in this situation, this is just an example. So let's say right now let's go with the 3077 versus potentially a higher threshold of, say, maybe it's 3244. This is the real practitioner problem, and you guys, we wanna be transparent about it. There might be different figures than what we're seeing right now as we're trying to sort through all of this, and the reality is they produce very different qualification thresholds, even with small increments like this that are less than $2 an hour.
IRCC has not officially confirmed which base they're actually working from, whether it's 3077, 3244 or something, something else. And so there's lots of news reports, uh, at least based on what IRCC has released, and various media outlets have said, "Yeah, 3077, that's based on our... the Stats [00:32:00] Can figures maybe blended with a little job, job bank information."
But at 3077, the threshold is $40 for the first multiplier, the 1.3, $46.16 for the 1.5, and $61.54 to get the full two times benefit Well, if you, if you bump that up even to 32.44, then of course those figures are also going to be adjusted. So why does $1.67 matter? Well, it matters because if you're getting 4- if you're making $41 an hour, and understand it's not even you making $41 an hour, okay?
If, if your occupation that, that wage average is, is, is $41 an hour, you might qualify under the 30.77 figure, but under the 32.44 it fails. And so yeah, it's, it's a flag that we wanna put out there for you. There's [00:33:00] uncertainty, and we don't wanna pretend it away 'cause it is a huge factor. And once again, your, your boss can't just say, "Oh, $31 uh, you know, $41 isn't enough?
Well, I'll just increase your wage to $44 an hour, then you'll be able to hit that 1.3 times multiplier." Well, that is not the case. It doesn't work that way. It's based on the averages, it's based on for that occupation. Once again, the example we gave with the nurse in Alberta versus the nurse in, in, in the Maritimes.
And so there's wage variation. And why reward those working in Toronto versus people that are working in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, right? A nurse is a nurse. That's the kind of theory. So I get the equity. It, it makes sense to some ex- It does make sense to try to find some baseline Yeah. And just like we talked about, Mark, the details are going to matter a ton, right?
And similarly to what's been happening with ESDC and the LMIA high wage, low wage cutoff rate, right? What they essentially did was they looked at the [00:34:00] medians for all the NOCs for everything within the province. So they looked at the provincial, uh, median for all wages, and then they said, "This is our baseline."
So we know, for example, in Ontario and in Alberta, it's $36 per hour. But what they did is they had already baked in an uplift in there. So there was a 20% uplift because they wanted to discourage people from applying for LMIAs. So you can kind of use the ESDC data and back out the uplift to try to figure out what the provincial medians are, but it really depends on how often they're going to update their wage data and what they're comparing it against.
So are they using last year? Are they using the year before last because that's when they have the most complete picture? And then how often are they going to revise it? Because they're going to need to have new published baseline data and then published data for every single NOC to figure out what does that [00:35:00] NOC have as a comparison to the median, and then the multiplying factors from the median.
So we'll have to see because if you're in one that's really close, like let's say you're in one where you're getting paid or the, the NOC is getting paid about $40 per hour, but we've got some inflationary pressures, then that NOC might fall out of the 1.3 times multiplier. So it really depends when IRCC is going to say, "This is what's set in stone, and this is what we use at the time of ITA, at the time of EAPR," for example.
So we'll have to see how they, how they actually set it. Yeah. And Alicia, we have to be fair to the research case here. It is real. You know, the studies that IRCC has published in 2025 are the foundation, and you can't ignore them, like if that's the metric that you're really focused on. If you're focused on the only value is economic value, [00:36:00] well, then yep, the data that you've pulled forward is, is very supportive of your, of your initiative here.
You know, temporary residents, like we talked about before, who earn over 100,000 pre-landing earn 162% more, at least in 2022, than those with no TR earnings. Now, that's an inflated figure once again because... I guess I shouldn't say it's inflated, but it's, it- it's not surprising, right? That they're gonna earn that much more for people that, that were just freshly landed, that don't have that ex- the any earnings in Canada.
And then the 50 to 74,000 bracket showed about a 36% premium, and those under 25, like we talked about before, a minus 18% gap. I think that's not really telling the whole story. Yeah, it's very low, and we know that maybe 18%, minus 18%, like earning less than 25 maybe isn't inaccurate. But there are, there is some, there's some support for that, that they are lower.
And then you get the immigrants with senior management job [00:37:00] offers earned median weekly wages of 3,616, and we're all- we're going back to 2021. Remember what was happening in 2021, right? The pandemic. Now they're saying nearly three times the, the 1,178 of those with no offer. And more than twice than the figures for non-senior management offers.
So the offer premium is- it's not marginal. Based on their statistics, it would be enormous, right? So how could you not wanna do this? You know, I just... It doesn't always tell the full story and, and by rewarding only duration of Canadian work experience, it does treat an $18 an hour job, uh, versus a $90 an hour job as identical when we know they're not, and that's, I guess, the measurement problem.
And the HWO, the who factor, is a genuine attempt to fix it. So I guess we could say we agree with the underlying economic logic, Alicia. Higher-earning temporary residents [00:38:00] produce better economic post-landing outcomes, and then using occupational median wages as a proxy does kinda ha- make that methodology is somewhat defensible.
It, it avoids the disparity that we talked about and the gaming problem that can sometime exist. And we support, I guess, the direction of this reform generally. But we also, Alicia, we've got some, like we've talked about already, we've got some concerns. You know? Where do we push back? Mm-hmm. And where should we push back?
I think the biggest pushback is, all right, if you wanted to bake in this high-wage occupation factor, why not do it with a category-based draw? Like, why put this in your essential CRS calculator for everybody? Because you're really gonna skew the system towards this is now gonna be the new thing, right?
Like, job offers used to be the, the thing that everybody was trying to get, and so now everybody's gonna be trying to work in these high-wage [00:39:00] NOCs. And so, while this is what they're doing, it seems like this is what they're doing, and so it is going to penalize people who have the training and just are not there yet, right?
It's gonna take them a little bit longer. They have the occupational mobility, but that takes time. And so if you're in an entry-level position, you're gonna have to work a while before you get into that multiplying factor, the high-wage occupation factor realm. So that's one thing that is, is not really accounted for until you actually hit those high-wage multipliers.
They could have done it with category-based draws. It, it seems like they will not do it with category-based draws, so that's gonna have a structural shift towards high-wage occupations in general, and this is where Charlotte and people like Charlotte are going to lose out. And if we're not appropriately valuing the helping professions where we absolutely need workers, we're not going to have the workers we need.
All right, let's take a look at... Lots of [00:40:00] people are asking the question, "So when does this land? When are, when are we gonna see this happen?" We've talked about this a little bit before, but there's a couple things that we want to address here as we wrap up this episode. So yes, there are kinda two clocks.
We talked about those before. The one that's kind of the fast hand on the clock, that's the CRS changes. We know those are gonna come a little bit quicker. We know that the slower hand, kind of the hourly hand, those of you who actually know how to read a clock in this digital world, that one moves slower, and that's the changes that are gonna happen, happen via regulation that will be published in the Canada Gazette.
So the question, Alicia, is with this HWO boost, we've seen lots of reports that it's coming with the, with the original changes, with the CRS changes, but, but can it? And is that really or, or does things have to happen from a regulate- regulation standpoint? Yeah, and it really depends on whether they're going to change the definition of arranged employment.
So we know that arranged employment, those job offer points are already baked into the regulations. That's what [00:41:00] we had in the past. What changes, what they have full control over is how many points or whether to award any points by ministerial instruction. And so as long as they keep the definition of arranged employment, so remember it normally needs to be a closed work permit.
It has to be LMI ba- LMIA-based or under an IMP, and it has to be closed. It can't be open. And then they're gonna layer on to that the high-wage occupation factor. But if they keep that same definition, they could roll it out tomorrow by simply changing the ministerial instruction. So we'll have to see how that works.
Let's take a look at how these play out for the viewers, and, uh, let's give you some takeaways. So there are essentially five steps that you can take right now to initiate change. Now, let's be honest. There isn't a ton you can do. You can't control employers out there, and the job offers they're gonna extend to you.
But if you do have opportunities and you start looking and pursuing, you [00:42:00] know that wage is gonna be a factor. You know that if you're in the situation of Charlotte, that you're li- likely gonna be left out unless you make changes. Just like this whole world of French that came, how many years ago was it?
Three, four years now, Alicia, and we've been telling people to study French, study French. Those who studied French, they're permanent residents now. And those of you who are working in low-wage occupations and it's just kinda comfortable, you like the city you're living in, you're reluctant to kinda make changes even though you're only making $20 an hour, well, understand that may very well be a dead end for you if you are a temporary resident right now looking to become an economic permanent resident.
So you can see here, look up your NOC's national median wage, and then determine is it above $40 an hour? Well, that kind of a range, although it's not a slam dunk range, but if it's in that range, you're, you're likely to get access to one of these multipliers Let's see here. And, uh, and then for number two, work in an H- HWO [00:43:00] occupation in Canada, document your start date.
You need to make sure that you're hitting at least a year. And just quickly wrapping up the, the last three here, have an employer, if they're willing to make an HWO, high-wage occupation offer to you, well, then start working on that right now. It takes time to get LMIA's in place and, uh, and when the- when these changes drop, if you're in those types of LMIA-based work permits, remember, at high wages, you're gonna be better off than those who are not.
And if you're Charlotte's profile, then just get, get advice. You know, our link to book a consult with Alicia and I, uh, is in the description of this episode on the video, and you can find it wherever you want, but it's just holthelaw/consultation. We can help you to kind of evaluate things. And then just pay attention to what we're saying.
As soon as that Canada Gazette becomes a reality, then it's just... it's not just news. We can actually see that things are moving forward and see if the changes are taking place with job offers and how they define arranged employment or whether we have this CRS drop that just changes [00:44:00] everything from night to day.
So pay attention to those things. It's important that if you see yourself in a Charlotte world, that you- you're gonna have to make a change, simple as that. Any last comments, Alicia? Any wrap-ups before we wrap this up and get over to our live stream? Yeah. Be careful of your NOC, right? So make sure that you are choosing the right NOC.
Don't try to shoehorn your NOC into a different NOC code that has a higher median wage because that's fraud, right? So make sure that you are looking at the lead statement, the majority of the bullet-pointed main duties. Make sure that you and your employer are aligned with the fact that, yes, this is the job, this is the NOC that you are actually doing, because IRCC is gonna be alive to fraud.
They're gonna be watching for people who are trying to shoehorn their way into a NOC just because it does fall in a higher wage occupation. Absolutely. And episode eight, the next one coming up is all about the job offer, [00:45:00] rebuilt. All right. We'll see you in episode eight, everyone. Take care. Thank you for listening to the Canadian Immigration Podcast, your trusted source for information on Canadian immigration law, policy, and practice. If you would like to book a legal consultation, please visit www.holthelaw.com. You can also find lots more helpful information on our Canadian Immigration Institute YouTube channel, where you can join Mark on one of his many Canadian Immigration live Q&As.
See you soon, and all the best as you navigate this crazy world we call Canadian immigration.
