My opinion is, looking at the table, that 20,580 QSW were admitted by the end of September. Do not look at the Econimic total-row, but the worker program Skilled worker -row (109). Also, the 28000-31000 target includes business, which is about 3000-4000, and it has exceeded target this year already (4155 by the end of Sep). In this webpage
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/publications/dp/2017-2018/07.asp#toc1-1-3 each program is divided into their own target numbers and the QSW without any others is 24,400-27,200.
So they still could admit 3820-6420 applications between Oct-Dec this year, which is not that much. Unless they are trying to hit the higher target, but then they will have to start working really hard.... Or maybe it is just an illusion that no decisions are arriving in this forum, but the general feel is that everything has slowed down significantly (also because the processing time went up to 14 months recently...).