Mel, absolutely people earning more should be getting more points! I wish that was the policy but it's not, it's easy to misinterpret.
They are using the applicant’s self-declared occupation (the NOC code, based on the job duties in an employment reference letter) and granting more points if they have a job offer or experience in one of the 218 high-wage occupations out of 500+.
So a marketing manager, dentist, or engineer earning $20 an hour gets the exact same points as one earning $200k a year. An electrician making $120k gets no extra points because that NOC isn’t on the high-wage list, but an industrial electrician (different NOC with a higher statistical median) earning $60k does.
It’s the occupation that grants the extra points, not the person’s actual earnings. And many of those 218 occupations have pretty subjective requirements. Officers evaluate the duties listed in the reference letter when assessing the occupational claim, not the wage.
That puts all the genuineness assessment of the experience on the officer. It’s much harder to prosecute this type of fraud or “title inflation” (misrepresenting past job duties) than it is to check hard numbers like a Notice of Assessment, T4, payroll records, or bank deposits. I wish they had implemented it based on the applicant’s actual earnings.
It was a lazy implementation because the current Express Entry portal has no field for wage or earnings data. Focusing on higher-earning immigrants is a good direction, but they are stretching it by using the historical median of the declared occupation as a stand-in for the individual’s contribution.