There are basically two main drivers for the rise in CRS points:
1.) Overall awareness of express entry program among potential immigrants
2.) Increase in internatational students who get PG open work permit in Canada
I have mentioned my thoughts in posts earlier based on my anecdotal interactions with the internatational students who are on work permit and applying for PR here. I thought to get some analysis on the actual data:
Facts and figures from Open Data Govt of Canada website
International students just from India:
Year - No. of new Study permits
2015 - 31,940
2016 - 52,670
2017 - 83,060
2018 - 107,290
Based on the above numbers, I will explain why the 2nd category is clearly the biggest force behind the push.
When a student completes his Canadian degree/diploma, s/he gets a 3 year work permit which lets them work for any employer in Canada. The first year of Canadian experience adds roughly 50 points, every year there after adds roughly 15 points.
In the year 2015, even if all 31,940 of the students completed their one year master by 2016, then after that completed their 1 year Canadian experience by 2017, they would take only 31,940 of the ITAs. These students with one year Canadian experience would easily get above 450 points.
Now let us take the student numbers from 2017 - They completed their education by 2018, completed one year Canadian experiency by 2019 July, and now getting in the pool. These are the ex-students who are getting into the pool right now, including getting ITAs in today's draw. You have 83,060 ex-students with Canadian experience from 2017 intake and an ITA target of little bit more than that. You hardly have any extra slots left over. Next year will be even worse with 107,290 students getting in the pool, you actually have more potential CEC candidates than the total ITAs available.
Granted that not all 83,060 would be masters students and not all will have one year experience, but we are talking about only students from India. The total count of students from all over the world in 2017 is... wait of it... 315,540. Yes, enough to take all the ITAs 3 times over. Not all are ideal express entry candidates with Canadian experience so there are some slots still available for those with high CRS. But sooner or later they will start completing Canadian experience as they utilize their 3 year open work permit they earned by completing their Candian degrees.
As we have more of the international students successfully finding jobs and completing their Canadian experience years in the coming months, the CRS will keep climbing.
This is not to discourage anyone, but just an attempt to help explain why the CRS is being driven higher. I see the question being asked often why is the CRS going higher? Unfortunately in the long run it is not a temporary phenomenon. In the short term if we have a B2B draw, defintely the score will come down, but based on the numbers you can see next year we will see even more candidates with higher scores completing their Canadian experience. Long term trend of higher CRS is here to stay unfortunately. In 2018 the number of total International students went up from 315,540 in 2017 to 355,800 in 2018 (107,290 from India alone, I emphasize on the India numbers as generally they tend to do masters or post graduate diploma that will count as 2 or more degrees which will get higher points and are very likely to apply for PR). Most of those 355,800 would have completed their canadian course by July 2019 and will be on track to get Canadian work experience by august 2020
