Healthcare and Social Technically Services Versus STEM: One Category Keeps Drawing, the Other Has Stalled
Picture two South African applicants checking the Express Entry rounds page on the same morning in mid-2026. One works in a healthcare-adjacent occupation and has watched their category draw again and again over the past three years. The other works in a STEM field and has been checking the same page for over two years without a single fresh round to react to. That’s not a difference in how each person is doing their research — it’s a genuine, measurable gap in draw activity, and healthcare category versus stem category express entry patterns explain exactly why.
The healthcare side of the story
Healthcare occupations first drew on 28 June 2023 — the very first category-based round ever held, at 500 invitations and a CRS cut-off of 476. It kept drawing steadily through 2023 and 2024. Then, from 27 February 2025, Minister Marc Miller’s announcement renamed and broadened it to “health care and social services,” and it kept going: rounds in June, July, August, October and November 2025, then February and June 2026, most recently issuing 4,000 invitations at CRS 475 on 25 June 2026. Across the full March 2022–July 2026 window, healthcare-related rounds (the original version plus its 2025 and 2026 successors) account for 15 separate draws between them — genuinely the most consistently active occupation category in the system.
The STEM side of the story
STEM occupations drew three times total: its first round on 5 July 2023 (500 invitations, CRS 486), then 8 December 2023 (5,900 invitations, CRS 481), then 11 April 2024 (4,500 invitations, CRS 491). Since that April 2024 round, STEM category no draws since 2024 has held true through all of 2025 and into 2026 — it remains eligible on IRCC’s own page, but nothing has actually been invited under it in well over two years.
Which express entry category draws most often, in one line
Healthcare and social services, by a wide margin, is the category IRCC has reached for most consistently since category-based selection began — 15 rounds and counting, against STEM’s three, all held before the STEM category went quiet.
What healthcare and social services category frequency tells you
The occupation list itself is part of the reason: healthcare and social services covers 37 occupations, the broadest list of any category, giving IRCC a wide, renewable pool to draw from each time labour needs arise. STEM’s 11 occupations are narrower, and — combined with Minister Miller’s 27 February 2025 announcement naming French, healthcare/social services, trades and education as the year’s priorities, with STEM notably absent — the category simply hasn’t been chosen for a round since.
What this means for a day-to-day applicant
If your occupation sits on the healthcare and social services list, checking the rounds page regularly is a reasonable habit — activity there has been genuinely frequent. If your occupation only fits STEM, that same daily check has produced nothing new to react to for over two years, and there’s no public signal for when, or whether, that changes.
Whether your specific role fits under healthcare and social services, STEM, or possibly both depending on how your duties are described, is worth confirming against the current NOC-coded occupation lists with a licensed RCIC rather than guessing from a job title alone.