The Department of Home Affairs has officially published the report of the last year Migration program. This post will reveal the top ten occupations for skill visas (including employer-sponsored visa) that were granted in 2020-2021 Migration program.
Full report can be downloaded at the end.
Registered Nurse, Software Programmers and Accountants stay at the top
With the effect of Covid-19 pandemic, it is well predicted that Nurse and Software Programmers are on the top priority.
Surprisingly, Accountant is on the top 3 and almost double compared to position 4 and 5, which are ICT Business and System Analysist and Civil Engineering Professionals. The number of visas granted for skilled independent (189) for Accountants is 202, for state and regional nominated (190/491) are over 1300, while for employer-sponsored visa is 520.
That was the last year when the skilled visa program was heavily effected by the pandemic. It is noticeable that among migrants, there have been more and more rumors saying Accountants is a "dead-end" choice and many made a decision to switch to other career, fearing they would never been invited. Furthermore, there were rumors every year for the last 10 years saying Accountants will soon be off the Medium and Long-term list.
In contrary, Accountants has been constantly advised in many industry reports that there is high demand and high shortage in the labor market. The Accounting Bodies in Australia including CPA, CA, IPA have been reporting that the demand for Accountants in Australia is high. The claim was subsequently supported by the Skill Priority List report published by National Skills Commission in June 2021, saying Accountants has strong future demand and in shortage across Australia.
Recently, Accountants have been added to the Priority Migration Skilled Occupation List by Department of Home Affairs among other occupations as a measure to support the economy during and post Covid-19. At State level, the economy-leading State, NSW, has announced their migration program for the current year, where Accountants is on the lists of many NSW regional areas.
In short, the top ten occupations that were granted skill visa (including employer-sponsored visa) are Nurse, Software Programmers, Accountants, ICT Business and System Analysts, Engineers, GPs, Chefs and Cooks.
Employer-sponsored visa grant rate
Another point worth mentioning is the successful rate of employer-sponsored visa application (subclass 482/186/494). In 2017-18, when the old visa subclass 457 was abolished and first replaced by the new visa subclass 482, the refusal rate was nearly 15%. In the last year, refusal rate was only 2.4%, that means 97.6% visa application were granted.
Software and Application Programs was the most popular occupation for employer-sponsored visa in the last year migration program with 1298 granted visas, which amounts to more than 40% of the total skill visas granted for the occupation.
