[Harry Lime]

Originally Posted by opendoor

They likely found other jobs, as the data for that region is showing almost full employment (though things have softened in the last month or so)

And really, you don't bring in immigrants necessarily to fill a labour void that exists right now, it's more of a longer-term thing.

Like I said above, based on current demographics we can expect a net loss of over 100K people each year in the labour force going forward absent immigration. So just to remain stagnant, we would need to increase the labor force by that amount, which equates to about 150K in immigration after accounting for non-working age immigrants (mostly children).

But obviously, a country doesn't want to remain stagnant, so if we want to maintain the long-term labour force growth we've had over the last 20 or so years (about 1.45% a year), we would need to increase the labour force by about 300K a year, which translates to about 450K immigrants. So 150K immigrants to maintain the labour force size, and then an additional 450K to maintain our long-term growth. That puts us at 600K immigrants needed a year, which is right where they've been for the last 4-5 years and where they're targeting for the next several.

So in terms of population, immigration seems excessive. But in terms of labour force, it puts us right at the long-term trajectory. In fact, it's lower than our 30 or 40 year averages (which are closer to 1.6-1.7%/year).

500-600K sounds about right, but it doesn't take into consideration the other paths to Canada yearly, such as permanent residency and refugees, which put the total up to over one million last year.