How to Calculate OINP Points in 2026: The Ontario Workforce Priority Stream Grid, and Why There Is No Cut-Off Score Yet
Here is how to calculate OINP points in 2026: score yourself against the 11 factors in Ontario's Workforce Priority stream grid, covering your job offer, Ontario work experience, Canadian earnings, status, education, language and work location. The top bands total 132 points. As of October 10, 2026, Ontario has published no cut-off score.
That gap matters more than your number does. Registering an expression of interest is free, but the application that follows an invitation costs $1,500 or $2,000 and stops being refundable the moment Ontario starts processing it. Ontario rescored one factor automatically on October 5, 2026 without publishing what it paid before, and the eight streams that existed until June were closed with their pools emptied. So if you are working from a score a calculator gave you last month, you may be measuring the wrong thing against a threshold that does not exist. Ontario's own Ontario Workforce Priority stream page is where the factors live, and it was last updated on October 6, 2026.
The Ontario Workforce Priority stream is the only OINP stream still open
Ontario replaced its program, it did not adjust it. Ontario's provincial nominee program is the pillar this stream now sits under, and the redesign emptied everything around it. Amendments to Ontario Regulation 422/17 under the Ontario Immigration Act, 2015 came into force on June 25, 2026, removing eight streams and introducing one: the Ontario Workforce Priority stream. The removed streams were Employer Job Offer: Foreign Worker, Employer Job Offer: In-Demand Skills, Employer Job Offer: International Student, Master's Graduate, PhD Graduate, Express Entry Human Capital Priorities, Express Entry French-Speaking Skilled Worker, and Express Entry Skilled Trades. Ontario's program page now states plainly that all other streams are closed.
If you had an expression of interest sitting in one of those pools, it is gone. Ontario said expressions of interest and job offers that had not produced an invitation would be withdrawn automatically over the following weeks, with registrants, employers and representatives notified directly. Applications already submitted after an invitation under a former stream keep being assessed against the rules that were in effect when they were submitted. That is the whole of it: old applications continue, old pools do not.
Ontario runs the new stream as three categories, not one. There is a TEER 0-3 category for job offers in higher-skilled occupations, a TEER 4-5 category for job offers in lower-skilled occupations, and a self-employed physician category that needs no job offer at all. Which category you fall into changes your work experience requirement, your language floor, your education floor, and two of your scoring factors before you add up a single point.
How to calculate OINP points: the full 2026 scoring grid
Once an expression of interest is registered, Ontario assigns points across 11 factors in four groups. Nothing here is self-reported in the usual sense: your TEER level, occupational category and wage are prepopulated from the job offer your employer submitted in the Employer Portal, so you cannot improve them by rephrasing anything.
Group | Factor | Band | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
Employment | NOC TEER category | TEER 0 or 1 | 9 |
Employment | NOC TEER category | TEER 2 or 3 | 6 |
Employment | NOC TEER category | TEER 4 or 5 | 0 |
Employment | NOC broad occupational category | Category 3 | 10 |
Employment | NOC broad occupational category | Category 7 | 8 |
Employment | NOC broad occupational category | Category 2 | 6 |
Employment | NOC broad occupational category | Categories 0, 1, 4, 8, 9 | 4 |
Employment | NOC broad occupational category | Categories 5, 6 | 2 |
Employment | Hourly wage (not applicable to physicians) | $40 or more | 15 |
Employment | Hourly wage | $35 to $39.99 | 12 |
Employment | Hourly wage | $30 to $34.99 | 10 |
Employment | Hourly wage | $25 to $29.99 | 8 |
Employment | Hourly wage | $20 to $24.99 | 5 |
Employment | Hourly wage | Under $20 | 0 |
Employment | Ontario experience, full time in the job offer position | Over 24 months | 18 |
Employment | Ontario experience, full time in the job offer position | 13 to 24 months | 15 |
Employment | Ontario experience, full time in the job offer position | 6 to 12 months | 12 |
Employment | Ontario experience, full time in the job offer position | Under 6 months, or not working in the position | 0 |
Employment | Ontario experience, under 6 months in the position | Over 24 months in Ontario | 12 |
Employment | Ontario experience, under 6 months in the position | 13 to 24 months | 9 |
Employment | Ontario experience, under 6 months in the position | 6 to 12 months | 6 |
Employment | Ontario experience, under 6 months in the position | Under 6 months, or not working in Ontario | 0 |
Employment | Ontario experience, self-employed physicians, medical practice in Ontario | Over 24 months | 18 |
Employment | Ontario experience, self-employed physicians | 13 to 24 months | 15 |
Employment | Ontario experience, self-employed physicians | 6 to 12 months | 12 |
Employment | Ontario experience, self-employed physicians | Under 6 months | 0 |
Employment | Canadian earnings history, one CRA Notice of Assessment | $80,000 or more in a year | 10 |
Employment | Canadian earnings history | $70,000 to $79,999 | 8 |
Employment | Canadian earnings history | $50,000 to $69,999 | 6 |
Employment | Canadian earnings history | $30,000 to $49,999 | 4 |
Employment | Canadian earnings history | Under $30,000 | 0 |
Employment | Legal status in Canada | Valid work permit | 10 |
Employment | Legal status in Canada | Valid study permit | 5 |
Employment | Legal status in Canada | Neither | 0 |
Education | Highest level of education | Doctorate, or a degree in medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine or optometry | 10 |
Education | Highest level of education | Master's degree | 8 |
Education | Highest level of education | Bachelor's degree, or a university certificate or diploma above bachelor level | 6 |
Education | Highest level of education | College, trade, apprenticeship, Ontario College Graduate Certificate, or university credential below bachelor level | 5 |
Education | Highest level of education | Less than a college or trade certificate | 0 |
Education | Number of Canadian education credentials | More than one | 10 |
Education | Number of Canadian education credentials | One | 5 |
Education | Number of Canadian education credentials | None | 0 |
Language | Official language ability, lowest of the four skills | CLB 9 or higher | 15 |
Language | Official language ability | CLB 8 | 12 |
Language | Official language ability | CLB 7 | 8 |
Language | Official language ability | CLB 6 | 4 |
Language | Official language ability | CLB 5 or lower | 0 |
Language | Knowledge of official languages | Both, at CLB 6 or higher in all four skills on each test | 10 |
Language | Knowledge of official languages | One | 5 |
Region | Job location, or the physician's OHIP practice address | Northern Ontario | 15 |
Region | Job location | Eastern Ontario, Central Ontario outside the GTA, or Southwestern Ontario | 10 |
Region | Job location | Inside the GTA but outside Toronto | 5 |
Region | Job location | Toronto | 0 |
Source: Ontario Workforce Priority stream, Government of Ontario. Verified October 2026.
Read the Ontario-experience rows together, because they are ladders and not a menu. If you have been full time in the actual job offer position for over two years, you take 18. If you have less than six months in that position, you drop onto the second ladder, which counts any Ontario work experience and caps at 12, and which also pays zero if you are not working in Ontario at all. The jump between the two top rungs is six points, and this is the factor most people misread in their own favour. Self-employed physicians score on their own third ladder, measured on cumulative medical practice in Ontario.
Why your OINP points total 132, not the 130 everyone quotes
Ontario does not publish a maximum score anywhere on the stream page. Add the top band of every factor yourself and a job offer applicant tops out at 132: 72 from the employment group, 20 from education, 25 from language, and 15 from region. Ansari Immigration, a Vancouver RCIC practice, rechecked that arithmetic against the grid Ontario updated on October 6, 2026, because many of the free OINP score calculators and explainers still total the stream out of 130.
The likeliest explanation is October 5, 2026, when Ontario changed the Canadian work experience earnings history factor. Here is what Ontario actually published:
This change has been applied automatically to all existing EOIs (Expressions of Interest) in the system.
Ontario's 2026 OINP program updates page, updated October 7, 2026, says registrants who earned $80,000 or more in a single year within the past five years, verified by a Canada Revenue Agency Notice of Assessment, will now receive 10 points under that factor, and that existing registrants do not need to change anything or log in for their scores to be updated.
What Ontario did not publish is what the factor paid before October 5. No Ontario page states the old rule or the old point value, so the link between that change and a 130-point total is an inference and not a published fact, and no registrant can tell from their portal whether their score went up, stayed flat, or simply got relabelled. What does not depend on the inference is the arithmetic in front of you: a calculator that totals 130 does not match the factors Ontario publishes today, whatever it told you in August. And if your score moved without you touching anything, October 5 is the only published change that would do it.
What is a good EOI score for OINP? Nobody can tell you yet
This is the honest answer, and it is the one the rest of the internet is not giving: there is no cut-off score for the Ontario Workforce Priority stream, because Ontario has not published a single invitation round for it.
The expression of interest portal opened on August 4, 2026. Ontario's OINP invitations to apply page does not list the Workforce Priority stream at all, and the most recent rounds it shows for any stream are from April 2026, before the redesign. That page was last updated on August 11, 2026. The stream page states no minimum score and says nothing about how often rounds will be held. Which means the pool has been accumulating registrations for more than two months with no published draw, no published cut-off, and no published schedule.
So treat your number as a planning figure, not a pass mark. It tells you which factors are costing you points and which are already maxed out. It cannot tell you whether you will be invited, and any page that quotes you a Workforce Priority cut-off is quoting something Ontario has not released.
The obvious objection, and it comes up constantly in the OINP forums: my friend was invited at 82, so 82 must be the number. Those scores are real, but they belong to streams that no longer exist and were scored on a different grid. Here is the last published set, from April 2026:
Closed stream | Last published round | Invitations | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
Employer Job Offer: Foreign Worker | April 30, 2026 | 786 | 57 and above |
Employer Job Offer: International Student | April 30, 2026 | 277 | 81 and above |
Employer Job Offer: In-Demand Skills | April 23, 2026 | 719 across four regional rounds | 34 and above |
Master's Graduate | April 22, 2026 | 674 | 61 and above |
PhD Graduate | April 22, 2026 | 244 | 56 and above |
Source: OINP invitations to apply, Government of Ontario. Verified October 2026.
Look at the spread: 34 to 81 across these five rounds, and 20 to 90 if you take in every round Ontario ran that spring. A cut-off is a property of one pool on one day, not a property of the program. Carrying an old number across a redesign is how people talk themselves into feeling safe at a score that was never measured against them.
If you registered an expression of interest after August 4, has your score changed since October 5? Post the before and after in the comments, with no personal details. A handful of real before-and-after numbers would tell everyone reading this more than any calculator can.
The October 5 change in practice: one Notice of Assessment decides 10 points
The earnings factor looks like the easiest 10 points on the grid. It is also the one with the strictest evidence rule, and Ontario puts that rule in the applicant document checklist rather than on the scoring page, which is why most people never see it.
Think of it the way a bank treats a mortgage application. The bank does not care what you say you earn; it cares what one document says you earned, in one period, assessed by someone else. Ontario does the same thing here. The checklist requires a single Notice of Assessment from the Canada Revenue Agency, issued within the last five years, and that one Notice of Assessment must show the earnings on its own. T4 slips alone are not accepted. Earnings from more than one calendar year cannot be added together to reach a band, and the floor for scoring anything at all is $30,000 in one year.
So the question to ask yourself is not "have I earned $80,000 in Canada." It is "does one of my Notices of Assessment, by itself, show $80,000 in one year." If your best year was split across two employers in the same tax year, that is fine, because it is one Notice of Assessment. If your $85,000 is two years of $42,500, it is worth four points, not ten.
Where OINP points get lost: five document traps
None of these are matters of judgement. All five are stated in Ontario's published applicant checklist for the stream, and each one is the difference between a claimed point and a scored point.
Earnings claimed from combined years. One Notice of Assessment, one calendar year. Combining years is not accepted, and T4 slips on their own are not accepted.
Ontario experience with the wrong employer. For job offer applicants, points for experience in the position require the work to have been with the job offer employer, in the same occupation, and at the same location. Comparable work elsewhere in Ontario belongs on the lower ladder.
An ECA that only went to IRCC. Foreign credentials need an Educational Credential Assessment report less than five years old, and you must authorize the assessing organization to send the result to the OINP electronically. Ontario states that sharing it with IRCC alone is not sufficient.
The wrong version of a language test. PTE Core is accepted; PTE Academic is not. IELTS General Training, CELPIP General, TEF Canada and TCF Canada are accepted, and the test must have been taken within the two years before you apply.
A consent form signed by your representative. The applicant consent form has to be completed and signed by the applicant. Ontario states that an immigration representative must not sign it for you.
Two of the deadlines are worth the same attention. After an invitation, the employer has 14 calendar days to apply for approval of the position, and you have 17 calendar days to submit and pay, but only after the employer has filed. Your deadline depends on somebody else acting first, which is a dependency you cannot fix at day 15.
Doing it alone: you add up the grid, accept whatever your portal shows, and hope the Notice of Assessment, the reference letters and the ECA transfer all land the way Ontario reads them.
With Ansari Immigration (flat CAD $4,000 for an Express Entry plus provincial nomination file, quoted upfront): the firm's licensed RCIC checks each scored factor against the document that has to prove it before the expression of interest goes in, and tells you where the evidence will not support the band. If your file is already clean, you will hear that too.
Two worked examples: why a $28 an hour job in Thunder Bay outscores a $45 an hour job in Toronto
Here is how this typically plays out. Both of these are illustrative profiles built only from the published grid, not real clients, and the arithmetic is the part worth copying.
Profile A, software developer, Toronto, $45 an hour. TEER 1 gives 9. The role sits in NOC broad category 2, natural and applied sciences, which gives 6. The wage band of $40 or more gives 15. Eighteen months full time with the job offer employer in the position gives 15. One Notice of Assessment showing $92,000 gives 10. A valid work permit gives 10. A bachelor's degree gives 6. No Canadian credential gives 0. A lowest CLB of 8 gives 12. One official language gives 5. Toronto gives 0. Total: 88.
Profile B, nurse aide, Thunder Bay, $28 an hour. TEER 3 gives 6. The role sits in NOC broad category 3, health occupations, which gives 10. The wage band of $25 to $29.99 gives 8. Thirty months full time with the job offer employer in the position gives 18. One Notice of Assessment showing $54,000 gives 6. A valid work permit gives 10. A college certificate gives 5. One Canadian credential gives 5. A lowest CLB of 7 gives 8. One official language gives 5. Northern Ontario gives 15. Total: 96.
The lower-paid, lower-TEER job wins by eight points. It gives up 7 on wage, 4 on language ability, 4 on Canadian earnings, 3 on TEER and 1 on education, and it takes back 15 on region, 5 on the Canadian credential, 4 on broad occupational category and 3 on Ontario experience. That is 19 points lost against 27 gained, for a net of eight. Region alone is worth more than the entire TEER factor, and it is the one factor a job offer in the wrong city zeroes out completely.
So if you have two offers in front of you, which one actually scores higher? Almost certainly the one outside the Greater Toronto Area, unless the Toronto wage is high enough and the Toronto occupation sits in a better broad category. Run both through the grid before you accept either, because this is the one decision where you still have leverage. Once your employer submits the job offer, the wage, TEER and category are fixed, and you have 30 calendar days to register the expression of interest against them.
What Ontario has not said, and what to do in the meantime
Three silences are worth naming, because each one changes what you should plan for.
Ontario's stream page sets out no settlement funds or proof of funds requirement. It publishes no processing time or service standard for the stream, only the 14-day and 17-day post-invitation deadlines. And it publishes no maximum score, no minimum score, and no invitation schedule. None of that is a loophole. It means the usual answers to "how much money do I need" and "how long will this take" are not available from the source, and anything you read that states them is somebody's estimate.
What is actually actionable right now: fix the factors that respond to effort. Language is the cheapest real movement on this grid, because the gap from CLB 7 to CLB 9 is seven points and a bilingual test adds five more, which together are worth more than moving from a $25 wage band to the top one. A second Canadian credential is worth five. A region change is worth up to 15 but only if the job is there. The two factors that will not budge are the ones your employer already submitted.
And if the nomination comes, know what you are holding. The nomination certificate is valid for six months, you must apply to IRCC for permanent residence within that window, and if you take the Express Entry route you have 30 calendar days to accept or refuse and 60 days to apply after accepting. Accepting adds 600 points to your CRS score, which in practice puts you far above any recent cut-off. A nomination is still not an approval: IRCC decides the permanent residence application on its own criteria.
Frequently asked questions about OINP points
What are the total points for OINP?
Ontario does not publish a maximum score, but adding the top band of all 11 factors on its current Workforce Priority grid gives 132 points for a job offer applicant: 72 employment, 20 education, 25 language and 15 regional. That total is our own tally of the published bands, and many third-party calculators still show 130.
What is a good EOI score for OINP?
There is no good score to aim at yet, because Ontario has published no invitation round and no cut-off for the Workforce Priority stream since the expression of interest portal opened on August 4, 2026. Scores quoted from the closed streams, which ranged from 34 to 81 in April 2026, were scored on a different grid and do not carry over.
Is the OINP foreign worker stream still open?
No, the Employer Job Offer: Foreign Worker stream closed when amendments to Ontario Regulation 422/17 came into force on June 25, 2026, along with In-Demand Skills, International Student, Master's Graduate, PhD Graduate and the three Express Entry streams. The Ontario Workforce Priority stream is the only OINP stream currently open.
Is TEER 4 eligible for OINP?
Yes, TEER 4 and TEER 5 job offers are eligible through the Ontario Workforce Priority stream's TEER 4-5 category, but the TEER factor itself scores zero points for those levels. The requirements also differ: nine months of cumulative full-time paid work in the job offer position within the past two years, CLB 4 in all four skills, and a Canadian secondary school diploma or equivalent.
How much work experience is required for OINP?
For a TEER 0-3 job offer, Ontario accepts six months consecutive full-time work in the offered position within the past 12 months, or three months for recent Ontario graduates, or two years cumulative in the same occupation within the past five years, or a required licence for the position. TEER 4-5 applicants need nine months cumulative full-time work in the job offer position within the past two years.
When is the next OINP draw?
Ontario has not announced a date, a schedule, or a frequency for Workforce Priority invitation rounds, and its invitations to apply page had published none as of October 10, 2026. Check that page directly rather than relying on third-party trackers, several of which advertise Workforce Priority cut-offs that Ontario has not released.
Related Posts
OINP changes 2026: what the stream closures mean for your PR plan: The background on Ontario's stream closures and what registrants in the old pools were told.
What is a confirmation of nomination: What arrives if you are nominated, how long it stays valid, and the steps that follow.
Do you have to live in the province that nominated you: The intent-to-reside requirement behind the stream's Ontario ties test, and what it does and does not oblige you to do.
Why work with Ansari Immigration
Here is the situation this stream will keep producing, described as a type rather than drawn from any one file: someone arrives holding a screenshot of a calculator score, not knowing that the stream it scored closed in June, or that their earnings points rest on a single Notice of Assessment. The first thing a licensed RCIC does is tell you which of those points your documents can actually prove, and if the honest answer is that your profile is not competitive yet, that is the answer you get. Ansari Immigration is led by a licensed RCIC regulated by CICC, RCIC R709304, practicing since 2019 and teaching immigration law at three institutions.
Confused about which band one of your factors falls into? Ask in the comments and keep it general; for a read on your own file, a 30-minute consultation is $80.
Amir Ansari, RCIC, Ansari Immigration, Vancouver, BC.
This article is for general information only. It is not legal advice. Program criteria, requirements, processing times, and selection approaches can change without notice. Always confirm details on official government websites or consult a licensed Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant (RCIC) for advice specific to your situation.
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