How Many Express Entry ITAs Can Be Seen In December?
Previous Express Entry draws can help in estimating how many Express Entry ITAs can be seen in December.
Should the number of ITAs issued in the remainder of 2024, relative to the landing target for 2025, be the same as it was on average for the years 2021 to 2023, IRCC can issue around 3,522 ITAs through Express Entry in December.
That said, this number is only a reasonable estimate given the truth of the assumption above – the actual number of ITAs issued in December might be significantly higher or lower than this estimate.
How Can One Guess How Many More ITAs IRCC Will Issue This Year?
How many Express Entry ITAs can be seen in December? Well, IRCC issues ITAs with the intention of meeting a specific target for landings – when a foreign national first comes to Canada as a permanent resident or when a temporary resident already in Canada obtains permanent residency.
There are two things to keep in mind here:
- Not every ITA will result in a landing
- Landings will lag ITAs significantly on account of processing times
IRCC’s landing target will be out in the annual Immigration Levels Plan.
The Immigration Plan details admissions, not ITAs. An admission is the final interview with an immigration officer, either at the port of entry or a local office. During this time an applicant signs their confirmation of permanent residence (COPR) and becomes a permanent resident. This process is electronic as well but always involves the approved immigrant arriving in Canada to accept their PR status.
Although it might seem easy enough to simply compare annual immigration targets to ITAs issued in a year to deduce the number of remaining ITAs, doing so would not take into account the lag between ITAs and landings due to IRCC processing times or the logistics of moving from one’s home country to Canada.
The newly released IRCC memorandum from July 2024 to the Deputy and Associate Deputy Ministers of Immigration stated that, due to the ‘lag between ITA and admissions, most ITAs issued between July 2024 and December will count towards 2025 permanent resident targets.
Thus, a more robust method to derive the number of remaining ITAs in a given year might be to look at the number of ITAs delivered between July and December relative to the following year’s Immigration Levels Plan target.
Assuming that IRCC will keep ITA issuances at consistent proportions to previous years, the department issues several ITAs equal to between 43-36% of the following year’s landing target between July 1 and December 21 of the current year. Outside of COVID years, this percentage has remained consistent:
| Year | ITAs Issued Between July To December Of The Previous Year | Annual Landing Target Through Federal High-Skilled Pathways | ITAs Issued As A Percentage Of The Year’s Landings Target |
| 2018 | 34,738 | 74,900 | 46.38% |
| 2019 | 50,100 | 81,400 | 61.55% |
| 2022 | 25,509 | 55,900 | 45.63% |
| 2023 | 35,750 | 82,800 | 43.18% |
| 2024 | 50,718 | 110,770 | 45.79% |
After removing the proportion of ITAs relative to landings in 2019 as an outlier, one can easily average out the remaining proportions to build a general idea of how IRCC manages the issuance of ITAs. The average number of ITAs issued between July and December in a year is 45.245%.
How Many More ITAs Could We See In December?
For 2025, IRCC has set an immigration target of 124,680 newcomers via the Express Entry system. Between July and November of this year, the department issued 52,888 ITAs through the Express Entry system.
If we assume that the proportion of ITAs issued this year relative to next year’s landing target will align with the average of the non-outlier previous years, we might expect that IRCC will issue a number of ITAs equivalent to 2.825% of its admissions target for 2025 in December of this year. This equates to 3,522 more ITAs delivered to applicants in the Express Entry pool over the remainder of 2024.
This estimate is only reasonable if the above assumptions hold true. There is no certainty that IRCC’s actions this year will be consistent with those of previous years. The department could issue far fewer or far more ITAs as it sees fit.
The forecast also does not consider several factors that one does not have visibility into, but IRCC likely does.
Who Is Likely To Get These ITAs?
How many Express Entry ITAs can be seen in December? Well, IRCC’s Immigration Levels Plan can also shed some light as to which kinds of applicants in the Express Entry pool are likely to obtain these ITAs.
The 2025-2027 Level’s Plan split the Federal High-Skilled allocation into two separate categories which IRCC will handle through the federal system: ‘Federal Economic Priorities’ and ‘In-Canada Focus’.
Moreover, these two categories cumulatively make up the totality of landings/ targets through the Express Entry system in 2025.
The ‘Federal Economic Priorities’ category will encompass category-based selections for applicants with professional skills and experience in in-demand sectors.
In 2025, eligible categories will include:
- Healthcare Professions
- Trade Occupations
- French-Language Proficiency
Targets for Francophone immigrants outside Quebec will also increase, from 8.5% of all admissions in 2025 to 10% in 2027.
The ‘In-Canada Focus’ category will invite applicants who are already in Canada. It will be in a bid to meet targeted immigration levels, without further adding to the nation’s population. Research also shows that these individuals tend to perform well in Canada’s labor market.
In 2025 this category will encompass the following:
- Canadian Experience Class (CEC) applicants
- Provincial Nominee Program applicants in Express Entry-aligned PNP streams
- Federal Skilled Worker Program applicants
- Federal Skilled Trades Program applicants
Based on the government’s stated attention, we might reasonably expect that many of the remaining 3,522 ITAs will be issued to applicants in the CEC and PNP programs, applicants with strong French language proficiency, and/ or applicants with professional experience in healthcare or trade occupations.
This trend is also reflected in Express Entry draws held in the previous months of 2024. For instance, consider the last 20 Express Entry draws that IRCC has held:
| Draw Type | Number Of Draws (August-December 2024) |
| Canadian Experience Class | 7 |
| Provincial Nominee Programs | 7 |
| French Language Proficiency | 4 |
| Trade Occupations | 1 |
| Healthcare Professions | 1 |
If you seek information on how to begin your Canada immigration application process, you can talk to our NavaImmigration experts at 1800-918-8490. You can also drop us an email at [email protected].
