Immigrants with genuine skills make up less than half of Australia’s skilled migration program intake, and have been a minority every year for the past 14 years, a new analysis shows.
According to Home Affairs data, only 46% of skilled permanent visa approvals in 2025 went to migrants meeting the Department’s skills criteria, and the remainder went mainly to their unskilled dependents, known as “chain migrants”.
An analysis of the data by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) also found that over the five years to June 2025, 307,575 chain migration visas were approved under the skilled stream, and unskilled migrants have been the majority of approvals since 2012, when tracking began.
Dr Kevin You, Senior Fellow at the IPA, said the numbers showed “what Australians have long suspected: the government’s migration program is a complete rort”.
“The federal government’s misleadingly named Skilled Migration Program is just a visa approvals target that clearly prioritises chain migration over skilled migration,” Dr You said.
“The government’s mass migration program has inflicted serious economic and social harm on mainstream Australians, all while telling them it’s to help the economy.
“Federal governments, under both major parties, have misled Australians into thinking that we have a skills-first migration system. We do not, which helps explain why no matter how much migration is increased, our workforce is not getting any more skilled or productive.”
The analysis showed that during the 2024-25 financial year Home Affairs approved 185,001 permanent migration visas, of which 132,148 (71%) were categorised as “skilled visas”.
Only 60,474 satisfied the Department’s skill criteria – 46% of the skilled visa stream and just 33% of the permanent visa intake.
Earlier this year former Treasury Secretary Martin Parkinson warned half of all permanent migrants were working below their skill level, and in September a breakdown of the 2023-24 permanent migration program by ANU professors found only 12% of the visas allocated went to offshore skilled primary applicants.
Header image credit: Pexels, IPA.
