Express Entry Draw 331: 471 PNP Candidates Issued Invitations on January 7, 2025

Key Takeaways for Express Entry Candidates

• Type of draw: Provincial Nominee Program
• Invitations issued: 471
• CRS score: 793
• Tie-breaking rule: November 25, 2024 at 16:57:27 UTC
• Prediction for the next draw: Canadian Experience Class on January 8, 2025.

Our Analysis of This Express Entry Draw

As we predicted, the first round of January 2025 was a Provincial Nominee Program round. However, this one was a relatively small round, inviting just 471 provincial nominees to apply for permanent residence in Canada.

This round was actually the third smallest PNP round in the past three years. Only the rounds in November 2024, inviting 174 candidates, and January 2022, inviting 392 candidates were smaller.

Due to the smaller number of people drawn from the pool, we did see an increase in the CRS score from the last PNP draw to this one.

The December 16, 2024 PNP draw invited 1,085 candidates with a CRS score of 727 or higher. Given today’s draw invited 471 and the CRS jumped to 793 — this is actually relatively good news for PNP candidates at this point. Based on this CRS cut off information and the number of candidates in the pool on January 7 (633 with a score higher than 601), competition amongst PNP candidates is not extremely strong at this point. 

We do expect this to change gradually through the year, however, given that PNP targets for 2025 were slashed by more than 50% from 2024.

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