Express Entry Resets on November 3: What the New High-Wage Points Mean for Your PR Plan
On November 3, the way Express Entry scores Canadian work experience and job offers changes. On October 16, Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab confirmed a new scoring factor tied to high-wage occupations, and confirmed that employers will no longer need a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) for a qualifying job offer to count.
That is why this week's update leads with November 3, in detail. After that, you will find the latest draws, provincial nominee news, business immigration, policy signals and a practical tip you can act on today.
The Big Story: Express Entry Changes on November 3, 2026
What was announced
• A new Labour Market Integration factor is added to the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS).
• Points are available for either eligible Canadian work experience or a qualifying job offer in a high-wage occupation.
• The factor is worth up to 150 points for candidates without an accompanying spouse or partner, and up to 140 points for candidates with one.
• An LMIA is no longer required for a qualifying job offer to earn these points.
• A temporary public policy also removes LMIA requirements for job offers used to establish eligibility under the Federal Skilled Worker Program and the Federal Skilled Trades Program, for candidates invited on or after November 3 who meet the policy's conditions.
Some context: job offer points were removed from Express Entry in March 2025. This is a targeted return, limited to high-wage occupations.
What counts as a high-wage occupation
• IRCC defines it as an occupation whose median wage across Canada is at least 1.3 times the median wage of the overall Canadian workforce.
• There are three tiers: at least 2 times, at least 1.5 times (but under 2), and at least 1.3 times (but under 1.5).
• IRCC has published a list of 186 eligible occupations, effective November 3, built on 2023 to 2025 wage data.
• The tier follows the occupation (its NOC code), not your own salary or job title.
• If the list changes after you receive an invitation to apply, IRCC keeps the level that applied on the date of your invitation.
Examples from the published list (always confirm your exact NOC code on IRCC's page):
• Top tier: senior managers, physicians and surgeons, lawyers, university professors, nurse practitioners, mining and petroleum engineers.
• Middle tier: software engineers and developers, data scientists, civil, mechanical and electrical engineers, registered nurses, teachers, pharmacists, construction managers, power system electricians.
• Lower tier: accountants and auditors, human resources professionals, web developers, social workers, industrial electricians, heavy-duty equipment mechanics, crane operators.
Route 1: Canadian work experience
• You keep the existing points for the length of your eligible Canadian work experience, up to 80 points for five years (70 with an accompanying spouse or partner).
• New: extra points if you have at least 12 months of eligible Canadian work experience in a high-wage occupation. That is 70 points for the top tier, 40 for the middle tier and 20 for the lower tier.
• Combined, the work experience route can reach 150 points (140 with a spouse or partner).
• Eligible experience generally must be gained in Canada within the previous 10 years, in NOC TEER 0, 1, 2 or 3.
• If your experience is not in a high-wage occupation, nothing is taken away. You simply keep your duration points and do not receive the extra ones.
Route 2: A qualifying job offer
• A qualifying job offer in a high-wage occupation is worth 100 points (top tier), 70 points (middle tier) or 50 points (lower tier).
• The offer must generally be for full-time, continuous work in Canada for at least one year after you become a permanent resident. Specific rules apply to skilled trades and to physicians providing publicly funded medical services.
• The offer can be for an existing or a new position, with any employer.
• Having an LMIA earns no extra points and gives no priority.
• An IRCC officer must be satisfied the offer is genuine. That includes whether the employer is actively engaged in the business, whether the offer reflects reasonable employment needs, whether the employer can meet its terms, whether you are qualified and likely to take the job, and whether the employer follows employment and recruitment laws.
• A revoked job offer no longer qualifies.
One route only: the higher score wins
If you qualify under both routes, IRCC awards whichever gives you more points. The two are not added together.
A simple example: a candidate with one year of Canadian experience in a lower-tier occupation would get 40 duration points plus 20 high-wage points, or 60. If that same candidate holds a qualifying middle-tier job offer worth 70, the factor is 70, not 130.
What happens on and after November 3
• IRCC will automatically recalculate the CRS scores of everyone already in the pool.
• The recalculation can take up to two weeks. During that time, invitation rounds are paused, and they restart once it is complete.
• Receiving additional points does not guarantee an invitation. Invitations still depend on each round's requirements and cutoff.
What to do before November 3
• Look up your NOC code on IRCC's high-wage list and note your tier.
• Check that your Canadian work experience dates, employers and NOC codes in your profile are accurate. The recalculation relies on what is already there.
• If you have a job offer that is not in your profile, IRCC says to add it before November 3. Make sure it is in writing, recent, full-time (30 hours or more per week) and shows pay, duties and conditions.
• Know the placeholder entries. IRCC's online system will not yet reflect the end of the LMIA requirement, so for an offer without an LMIA, IRCC instructs candidates to answer Yes to a positive LMIA, enter LMIA number 00000, issue date 2026-01-01 and expiry date 2029-01-01. The wording on timing is a little awkward, so we are re-checking the instructions on November 3 for our clients.
• Never pay for a job offer. IRCC has said it will verify offers and act on fraud and misrepresentation, and an offer that is not genuine can sink an application and carry serious consequences.
• Do not panic when rounds pause. That is part of the process.
Our read: who gains, and what to keep in mind
• Candidates already working in Canada in a listed occupation have the clearest upside, especially in health care, engineering, technology, education and the skilled trades.
• Candidates outside the list do not lose points, but they will be competing against a pool in which some candidates jump ahead. How cutoffs move is not yet known, and we will not guess at numbers.
• Employers should note that dropping the LMIA requirement applies to Express Entry job offers. It does not automatically remove LMIA requirements for temporary work permits.
• Nothing announced changes the 600-point boost for a provincial nomination.
• Further Express Entry changes may follow, so treat November 3 as a first step rather than the final word.
The other November 3 change: asylum claims
IRCC is also changing how asylum claims are submitted through the IRCC Portal on November 3.
• Claims submitted through the Portal by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on November 2 generally will not need the new information unless IRCC asks.
• This is a portal cut-over, not a deadline to claim asylum. The right to seek protection does not disappear on November 3.
• Unfinished applications keep the personal information already saved, but claimants will need to review earlier answers and respond to new or unanswered questions.
• If a claim was started at the border, check with your representative about linking it to your IRCC Portal account before the cut-off.
Express Entry Draws: Where Things Stand
The most recent cluster of rounds ran October 13 to 16. As far as we can confirm, there has been no new round since.
• October 13 | Provincial Nominee Program: 752 invitations, CRS cutoff 772.
• October 15 | Canadian Experience Class: 2,500 invitations, CRS cutoff 519. That is one point above the previous CEC round and 500 invitations larger. CEC cutoffs have held between 518 and 521 since early September.
• October 16 | French-language proficiency: 5,000 invitations, CRS cutoff 435, up 53 points from the previous French-language round on August 19 (382).
• October 1 | Trades occupations: 3,500 invitations, CRS cutoff 476.
• 2026 so far: 62 rounds and 143,467 invitations through October 16.
Any round held before November 3 would be the last under the current scoring for at least a couple of weeks. IRCC has not announced one, so do not plan around it.
Provincial Nominee Program Updates
Manitoba
• Draw on October 22 issued 1,304 Letters of Advice to Apply, the largest round since July and the second-largest of 2026.
• 734 went to candidates who completed post-secondary study in Manitoba (minimum score 816), 513 to the overall top-scoring selection (minimum 846) and 57 through strategic recruitment initiatives.
• 353 of the invited candidates declared an Express Entry profile.
• Manitoba's 2026 total now stands at 8,527 invitations across 21 rounds.
• A reminder on accuracy: some eligible candidates were passed over because they did not provide a valid language test number or a valid strategic recruitment invitation number. Keep your EOI details current.
Alberta
• Alberta issued more than 560 invitations across five AAIP draws between October 9 and October 20.
• The October 20 Express Entry Priority Sectors (General) round invited 386 candidates at a minimum score of 60, Alberta's largest Express Entry round of 2026.
• As of the October 21 update, Alberta had issued 5,831 nominations against a 2026 allocation of 6,603, leaving 772 spaces. The Express Entry priority sector allocation is effectively used up, while the Alberta Opportunity Stream (289 spaces) and Rural Renewal Stream (244) still have room.
British Columbia
• The October 20 Entrepreneur Immigration draw invited 10 candidates in the Base category and fewer than 5 in the Regional Pilot, both at a minimum score of 118.
• On October 15, the Temporary Rural/Remote Health Support Initiative invited 16 candidates at a minimum score of 54.
Ontario
• As of October 17, Ontario still had not held an invitation round under the Ontario Workforce Priority stream. That is more than ten weeks since the expression of interest portal opened on August 4, and Ontario does not give advance notice of rounds.
• On October 16, Ontario launched a new round of its regional initiative (REDI), setting aside nomination spaces for six communities through the end of 2027: Greater Sudbury, Kenora District, Nipissing District, Rainy River District, Renfrew County and Thunder Bay.
Atlantic Canada
• In mid-October, Newfoundland and Labrador issued 126 invitations and Prince Edward Island issued 164.
Business Immigration News
• No federal change this week. The Start-Up Visa has been closed to new applications since December 31, 2025, and the Self-Employed Persons Program remains paused until further notice. IRCC has not announced details of the new entrepreneur pilot it said was coming.
• British Columbia's October 20 Entrepreneur draw (above) is the main provincial activity we saw.
• November 3 matters for business people too. Senior management occupations appear in the upper tiers of IRCC's high-wage list, so a senior manager working in Canada, or holding a qualifying offer, could see a meaningful points gain. With federal entrepreneur doors largely shut, Express Entry and provincial streams are carrying more of the load.
Ministerial Statements and Policy Signals
Minister Diab signals a shift on levels
• At the October 16 announcement, Minister Diab said Canada's population growth has been the slowest since the Second World War, and that the country needs people from outside to fill gaps for roughly the next decade.
• She did not give numbers, and did not say whether any increase would apply to permanent residents, temporary residents or both. Targets, she said, will come in the Immigration Levels Plan as scheduled.
• The current 2026–2028 plan holds permanent resident admissions at 380,000 a year. The 2027–2029 plan is due by November 1 under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, with a fallback of 30 sitting days if Parliament is not sitting. Some reports point to November 2.
• The Prime Minister said in September that Ottawa would consider a controlled population increase once the system is firmly under control. The Conservative immigration critic has called for further reductions instead, and some economists caution that a soft labour market argues for restraint.
• The numbers behind the debate: Canada's population grew 0.5% between July 2025 and July 2026, the smallest annual gain since the mid-1940s, and non-permanent residents make up about 6.7% of the population.
Alberta's referendum
• Albertans voted on October 19. Unofficial results show roughly 76% in favour of remaining in Canada, and support for the immigration-related questions, including more provincial say over immigration.
• The immigration questions are non-binding, and no immigration rule has changed as a result of the vote. Immigration is a shared jurisdiction, so any change would have to come through negotiation or legislation.
• Elections Alberta publishes the official results on October 29.
The Week Ahead: Key Dates
• October 26 to 30: Possible Express Entry and provincial draws. There are no published schedules.
• Thursday, October 29: Elections Alberta publishes official referendum results.
• By Sunday, November 1: Statutory deadline to table the 2027–2029 Immigration Levels Plan, subject to the sitting-day fallback.
• Monday, November 2, 11:59 p.m. ET: Cut-off for the existing IRCC Portal asylum claim process.
• Tuesday, November 3: Express Entry changes take effect. Pool recalculation begins and invitation rounds pause for up to two weeks.
Immigration Tip of the Week: Get Your NOC Right Before November 3
Under the new factor, your points depend on the NOC code behind your work, not on your job title or salary. A wrong or loosely matched NOC can cost you a tier, or the points altogether.
• Compare your actual duties with the main duties of the NOC you have listed, not just the title.
• Make sure your employment reference letters describe your duties, hours, dates and pay in a way that matches that NOC.
• Keep your profile, your letters and your pay records consistent with each other.
• If you have a job offer, confirm the NOC code, start date, employer name and address are accurate and match the written offer.
A few minutes of checking now is far easier than correcting an issue after an invitation.
Work With Elgin Immigration
If you are in the Express Entry pool, have a job offer, or are working in a listed occupation and want to know where you stand before November 3, we are here to help. Reach us at info@elginimmigration.com or visit elginimmigration.com.
This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Immigration policies and procedures can change; please contact Elgin Immigration at info@elginimmigration.com for advice specific to your situation.
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