Where Did BC’s PNP Allocation Go In 2024?

We’ve dug through the pages and pages of data to tease out the key insights and takeaways from the BC PNP reporting for 2024. Read on to find out what we learned.

Where Did BC PNP Nominees Live in 2024?

This is actually a key question because the Provincial Nominee Program was set up to achieve two things:

(1) to distribute more immigrants to regions and provinces outside of the three major Canadian cities and

(2) to help meet the workforce needs of employers in those regions and provinces.

Distributing the economic benefits of immigration outside of Metro Vancouver is also a strategic priority for the BC government in 2025.

Interestingly, 42% of workers nominated in 2024 are based in regional communities around BC. Here’s the data directly from the BC PNP 2024 report:

BC Provincial Nominee Program Statistics

BC’s PNP has two broader programs: Skills Immigration and Entrepreneur Immigration.

Most of the province’s allocation each year goes to the Skills Immigration program, with around 7,972 nominations (of 8,000 total) going to SI in 2024.

When it comes to the Skills Immigration nominations, here’s what 2024 looked like:

Skilled Worker – 656

Entry Level and Semi-Skilled – 223

International Graduate – 521

International Post-Graduate – 1,001

Health Authority – 1,430

EEBC – Skilled Worker – 2,162

EEBC – International Graduate – 1,097

EEBC – International Post-Graduate – 487

EEBC – Health Authority – 395.

The total there is 7,972.

Our insight

BC announced that it will suspend applications and nominations for its International Graduate and Post-Graduate streams in 2025 due to overwhelming demand and a reduced allocation of just 4000 invitations for this year. In 2024, 3,106 nominations were extended to students via the BC PNP. So, it’s clear that the pause on the student streams in BC will help it manage applications with the reduced allocation – though this is no doubt difficult news for the student graduates to hear.

The BC PNP has also essentially paused invitations for its Skills Immigration for 2025 too, short of sending out nominations to very high earners and select targeted workers, as well as through the Entrepreneur stream. This change also is a result of the reduced allocation for 2025 and the province’s heavy focus on attracting healthcare workers.

Citizenship of BC PNP Nominees in 2024

The BC PNP report for 2024 reveals that almost half of the nominees were from South and Central Asia, while around a quarter came from East and Southeast Asia. Europe was the next largest segment.

Top five source countries for the BC PNP in 2024 were:

1. India
2. China
3. Philippines
4. Iran
5. Nigeria.

Occupations Receiving Invitations Via The BC PNP

The priority targeting of early childhood educators led to workers in the “Education, law and social/community/government services” category becoming the leading occupational category for the BC PNP in 2024. In fact, 23.5% (almost one quarter!) of nominations went to workers in this category. Of those nominations, 1,279 went to early childhood educators in 2024. It’s worth noting that this overall percentage will likely decrease in 2025, since the BC PNP is no longer prioritizing early childhood education assistants. Early childhood educators will remain a priority in 2025.

The next highest occupational category was actually not a category at all. It was the ‘No listed occupation’ segment, which saw 18.7% of nominations. This category relates to International Post-Graduate stream nominees, so it’s comprised of the international graduates who qualified for the BC PNP in 2024, before it closed for applications in November of last year.

Natural and applied sciences and related was the next highest contingent of nominees, followed by health workers.

This isn’t surprising, given 16% of Skilled Immigration nominees worked in technology occupations – which are a priority for the BC PNP and many of fall under the natural and applied sciences category. This sounds high, but it’s actually a marked drop from the two years prior – in 2022, 33.6% of nominations went to tech workers while in 2023 it was 30.4%.

The percentage of healthcare workers has been increasing over time too, with 16.8% of nominees for Skilled Immigration pathways going to clinical health workers (up from 4.3% in 2022 and 9.5% in 2023). This figure excludes those in the Health Authority stream that work in a non-clinical setting.

Our insight here

Given the targeting of early childhood educators, technology workers, veterinarians, and healthcare workers in 2024, we aren’t surprised to see these categories dominating the nominations. It’s possible that these workers will also attract the lions share of nominations in 2025.

Salary Trends for Nominees in British Columbia

There were a few interesting trends in the 2024 data when it comes to overall salaries.

BC PNP Salary vs Average Salary in BC and Canada

According to the BC provincial government, BC’s average wage in 2024 was $1,371.30 per week or $71,307.60 annually. This is higher than the national average of $69,350.32 annually.

Based on the BC PNP data from 2024, it’s worth noting that the average worker who was nominated through the Skilled Worker program in the BC PNP earned more than the average worker in BC and Canada – with an average salary of $89,846 and a median salary of $72,800.

Health authority workers were also more likely to earn above the provincial and national average, with an average salary of $81,199. Though the median salary for Health Authority workers was lower than the national and provincial average, at $56,992. The difference in these two statistics is likely because of outlier salaries for high earning doctors and nurse practitioners who may come through this stream.

One of the goals of the skilled immigration program is to bring higher earning workers to BC to help generate tax dollars and to generate other benefits. So, the fact that the median salary is higher than the average BC salary shows that the program is achieving that goal, at least to an extent.

Workers who came through the International Graduate and Entry Level and Semi-Skilled programs earned, on average, less than the average BC worker, however. There are many reasons this could be the case, including less work experience (in the case of international graduates) and less education and/or work experience in the case of the Entry Level and Semi-Skilled program.

The State of the BC PNP Pool 

The number of people in the BC PNP candidate pool for Skilled Immigration has more than doubled since January 1, 2022 (when it was around 3000) to more than 8000 at the end of 2024.  

In September 2024, it had actually more than tripled to more than 10,000 registrants, but that number dropped significantly after the International Graduate stream stopped accepting registrations in November 2024.  

Entrepreneur Immigration to BC in 2024 

“Over the 10-year period from 2015 to 2024, EI nominees established 438 new businesses, created 1,433 jobs, and invested $208 million in the British Columbia economy.”  

In other words, the Entrepreneur Program has had a pretty profound impact on BC’s economy. That’s why it is still attracting nominations in 2025, despite the reduced nomination allocation for BC. (Although, draws have slowed down from 2024, when they were completed monthly.) 

The other key insight we found in the data is that 49% of registrations in the EI Base category and 94% of registrations in the EI Regional category received an Invitation to apply for a provincial nomination.  

BC also noted that there was a strong presence of entrepreneurs in the Cariboo region of BC, with around one quarter of nominees based there.

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