The share of principal applicants among economic-class immigrants who’d previously earned income in Canada rose from 11.5 per cent in 2000 to 59 per cent in 2018, according to a Statistics Canada study released Wednesday. (The Logic)

Talking point: The agency attributed the shift to the increasing number of temporary foreign workers admitted over the near-two-decade period, and the growing importance within the country’s economic-class immigration system of a federal program that selects for Canadian experience as well as provincial nominee programs. New arrivals are also increasingly drawn from the well-compensated—almost a third of this larger pool in 2018 earned more than $50,000 annually pre-immigration, a 10 percentage point increase from 2000. Canada is increasingly moving toward a “two-step migration system” for economic-class arrivals, University of Waterloo economics professor Mikal Skuterud told The Logic last month, noting that also includes international students who get post-graduate work permits before becoming permanent residents. Domestic work experience is “a very strong predictor of success in the Canadian labor market, if you’ve had some work experience before,” he said.