Canadians on the Move
With housing in short supply, up-and-down interest rates, altered post-pandemic commuting patterns and cost-of-living concerns, it’s no wonder that Canadians’ relocation patterns have also changed over the past few years. We turned to Environics Analytics’ (EA’s) MoverStats database alongside the powerful PRIZM® segmentation system, to help make sense of what is happening. MoverStats contains our quarter-by-quarter estimates of domestic migration (Canadian residents moving) – both movers in, and movers out – for every census dissemination area in Canada. Immigration, both permanent and temporary by source country or region, is estimated separately in EA’s NewToCanada database. While we don’t look at immigration in detail in this analysis, it’s important to recognize that it is another source of in-migration.
The chart below shows that out of a total 16 million households in Canada in 2024, about 1.7 million moved between July 1, 2023 (2023 Q3) and June 30, 2024 (2024 Q2) — 10.7% of all households. These mover households contained about 4.2 million population. For reference, our NewToCanada database estimates the population of newcomers to be 464,000 permanent residents and another 1.7 million temporary residents from other countries. So, domestic movers were about twice the number of immigrants.
The number of domestic movers in the latest year of available data has declined by 18% compared to 2020-2021 – despite a 5% growth in the total number of households in the country over the same period according to EA’s DemoStats data, which creates annual demographic estimates and projections for hundreds of variables for small areas.
10.7% of Canadian households moved in the latest year of available data. The total number of moves has declined by 18% over the past three years.
The Moving Profile of Movers
EA’s PRIZM® segmentation system used alongside MoverStats gives us insight into who moves and how that is changing over time. We focused on the peak Q2 moving season and compared the PRIZM® profiles of movers in 2022 with 2024. These profiles reflect the PRIZM assignment of movers at their origin (the neighbourhoods where they moved from). In this quarter, the number of movers also dropped significantly between Q2 2022 and Q2 2024: from about 595,000 to 465,500 (-22%). But the PRIZM story reveals that the mix of who is moving has “doubled down” on those who were most likely to move back in 2022. In other words, the biggest mover PRIZM segments in 2022 took an even larger share of all movers in 2024. Segments with lower move rates in 2022 had very large drops - 30% to 50% - in the number of moves by 2024.
Broadly, the PRIZMs with the highest move rates in Q2 2024 had only small declines in the number of movers compared to the Canadian average. They can be described in two groups:
- Lower-income young renters
- Modest income seniors
The types of Canadians with the lowest move rates in 2024 had rates in line with the national average back in 2022, but the number of moves they make has declined sharply. They can be described as:
- English-Canada multicultural suburbia
- French-Canada suburbia
Below are sample PRIZMs in each of these groups with their associated move statistics to illustrate. There are several other PRIZMs that fit into each group.
Canadians most likely to move and least likely to move each fall into two broad socio-demographic groups, illustrated by sample PRIZM segments.
A Tale of Two Cities
Two interesting cities to compare using MoverStats are Toronto and Calgary. We looked at the census metropolitan areas (CMAs) which are the commuter sheds for those cities as defined by Statistics Canada.
This may be surprising, but the chart for Toronto shows a consistent net outflow of households from domestic migration of about 20,000 households (or about 70,000 people) annually: more households move out of the Toronto area than move in from other parts of Canada. We all know that overall, the Toronto area is growing in population. This is a result of immigration (which is estimated in Environics Analytics’ NewToCanada data as 74,000 new permanent residents plus another 284,000 temporary residents. So, without immigration, if current domestic migration patterns persisted, the Toronto area would actually lose population!
The Toronto area loses households to the rest of the country from domestic migration. Immigration more than makes up for this loss and tips the region to growth.
Calgary’s pattern is a bit different. While Toronto’s largely follows the national trend of gradually declining migration, Calgary had a large, sudden drop in late 2022 and into 2023, especially in out-migration. This means more people decided to stay in Calgary. On the other hand, in-migration recovered somewhat which accounts for a pattern reversal in the overall balance; Calgary was losing a small number of households to domestic migration between 2020 to mid-2022 but is now a net gainer. Calgary added nearly 8,000 households, or about 21,000 people over the latest year from domestic migration. Immigration added another 29,000 permanent residents and 69,000 temporary residents.
Calgary has become a net recipient of domestic migration since early 2023.
The “Where” Matters
Municipalities, marketers, and retailers keep on top of local trends to optimize service delivery, communications and customer acquisition opportunities with new movers since relocation drives many purchase and service use decisions like renovations, furniture, change of utility and telco providers and local shopping. The maps below show how migration patterns have shifted between 2022 and 2024 in Toronto and Calgary to different parts of the CMA. Both sets of maps look at where in-movers settled during peak move season (Q2).
In Toronto, in 2022, in-movers preferred Richmond Hill, southwest Vaughan and the southwest part of Toronto near Lake Ontario. By 2024, that shifted to both the downtown and the western half of the CMA more generally.
Movers to Toronto shifted more to the western part of the region compared to 2022.
In Calgary, the focus of in-movers back in 2022 was central and west Calgary, with pockets in the south and Chestermere in the east. By 2024, in-migration was focused squarely on the north-east quadrant of the city, with Chestermere continuing to attract new residents.
Calgary's movers now favour the north-east quadrant of the city compared to 2022.
Lots has been written (anecdotally and with data) about Alberta becoming a magnet for newcomers to Canada, with many first landing in the traditional gateway cities of Toronto and Vancouver, and then making their way there. MoverStats with PRIZM picks up on this trend: segment 15 South Asian Enterprise had the largest increase in share as a source of movers to Calgary. This is a segment found mostly in the Toronto and Vancouver areas. The segment in Q2 2024 was the fourth most important source of movers to the area (up from number 12 in 2022). The map above supports this finding: the northeast quadrant of Calgary, where lots of in-mover activity exits, has a large concentration of South Asians.
South Asian Enterprise is now the fastest growing source segment of in-migration to Calgary.
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