Key findings:
- Despite the federal government’s Skilled Migration Program being described as “designed to improve the productive capacity of the economy and fill skill shortages in the labour market”, most applications granted approval for ‘skilled’ permanent visas belonged to people accompanying skilled migrants (a form of chain migration).
- In 2024-25, the Department of Home Affairs approved 185,001 permanent migration visas. While 132,148 were categorised as skilled visas (71 per cent), only 60,474 (33 per cent) satisfied the Department of Home Affairs’ skills requirements. The remainder of the skills category is made up of ‘secondary applicants’ who are typically the dependents of skilled migrants.
- The other main category of permanent visa approvals, family, accounted for 52,500 approvals in 2024-25. However, if the family component of the skilled category was added, the total would have been 124,371, or 67 per cent of all permanent visa approvals for the financial year.
- Over the five years to June 2025, visas approved for family and other dependants totalled 594,470, of which 307,575 were chain permanent migrants under the skilled category.
Chart 1: Skilled migrants a minority of all permanent migrant visas approved
