AI Analysis: Estimates of the components of interprovincial migration, quarterly

Executive Summary

Statistics Canada's Table 17100020 tracks 64 years of quarterly interprovincial migration across Canada (1961–2025), revealing long-term growth in population mobility with average quarterly flows of approximately 81,009 persons in both directions — perfectly balanced at the national level since every mover is simultaneously an out-migrant from one province and an in-migrant to another. The data is heavily right-skewed, driven by large provinces like Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia, while small territories such as Nunavut record flows as low as 27 persons per quarter. In- and out-migration are nearly perfectly correlated (r = 0.990), confirming that high mobility is symmetric across provinces, though net migration captures directional imbalances that volume-based measures obscure.

Key Findings

• The dataset spans 258 quarters (July 1961 to October 2025) across 30 unique time series, covering 15 geographic areas with both in-migrant and out-migrant counts, totalling 6,824 records.
• Average quarterly interprovincial migration is 81,009 persons in each direction, with values ranging from a low of 27 persons (Nunavut, Q4 2017) to a peak of 149,590 persons (Canada, Q3 1980).
• The distribution is heavily right-skewed: the overall median (4,548 persons) is less than half the mean (12,238 persons), reflecting that most provincial flows are small while a few large provinces and Canada-level aggregates dominate.
• In-migrants and out-migrants are almost perfectly correlated (r = 0.990), and both correlate near-perfectly with total migration (r ≈ 0.997), while net migration is nearly uncorrelated with out-migrants (r = 0.004), confirming it measures directional imbalance rather than overall volume.
• An IQR-based outlier analysis flagged 609 of 6,824 records (approximately 8.9%) as anomalous, with an upper bound of ~28,104 persons per quarter distinguishing typical provincial flows from unusually large migration events.
• Larger provinces — Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia — consistently rank highest in average migration volume, while territories and smaller provinces record the lowest flows, driving the wide standard deviation of approximately 22,000 persons.
• A COVID-era comparison (2020–2021 vs. 2018–2019 baseline) was conducted to assess pandemic-driven anomalies, situating recent disruptions within the dataset's broader 64-year record of cyclical migration fluctuations likely tied to economic cycles.