Net overseas migration: what it counts, and why it decides your visa settings

Figures in this article are from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the 2026–27 Federal Budget, each dated below. Net overseas migration is revised after first publication, so the latest quarter is always provisional.

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Almost every migration change I have logged this year traces back to one number. The student visa reform on 2 October, the ballot for second-year working holiday visas, the No Further Stay condition coming to visitor visas: each was announced as a way to bring net overseas migration down to a Budget target. If you hold or want a temporary visa, that number now sets your odds. So it is worth knowing what it is, where it sits, and why the cuts landed where they did.

What the number actually counts

Net overseas migration, or NOM, is arrivals minus departures over a year. It is not a count of immigrants, and it is not the permanent migration program. It is a population measure, and the ABS runs it on one rule: a person is counted as arriving if they spend 12 months out of a 16-month window in Australia, and as departing if they spend 12 of 16 months out of it. The 12 months need not be continuous.

Three things follow from that rule.

• Short visits do not count. A tourist, a three-week business visitor, a student’s parents at graduation: none of them move the number.
• Visa type does not matter, only time. A student who stays two years counts as an arrival. A sponsored worker who stays two years counts the same. A permanent visa granted to someone already here counts for nothing, because they were counted when they arrived on their first visa.
• Citizens count too. Australians moving home from London add to the number. Australians leaving for Dubai subtract from it. In 2024–25, 64,000 citizens arrived and 81,500 left, so citizens were a net loss of about 17,500 on the same figure the government is trying to cut.

Where it sits

The ABS published its latest quarterly figure on 17 September 2026, the same day the Minister spoke at the National Press Club.

• Year to March 2026: 292,100, down from 309,500 in the year before.
• Peak: about 556,000 in the year to September 2023, as the post-pandemic backlog of students and workers arrived at once.
• Financial year 2024–25: 306,000, from 568,000 arrivals and 263,000 departures.
• Population at 31 March 2026: 27.9 million, growing 1.4 per cent a year, of which natural increase was only 100,600.

So the number has already almost halved from its peak. The arrivals side is falling and the departures side is rising, which is what you would expect three years after a surge: the people who came in 2022 and 2023 on time-limited visas are now leaving.

Who is in the number

The composition is the part that explains the policy. These are the 2024–25 arrivals by visa group, from the ABS overseas migration release of 19 December 2025.

Group	Arrivals 2024–25
Temporary students	157,000
Permanent visa holders	88,000
Working holiday makers	78,000
Australian citizens returning	64,000
Visitors (counted because they stayed 12 of 16 months)	56,000
New Zealand citizens	53,000
Temporary skilled (482 and similar)	46,000

Students are the largest block by a wide margin. Working holiday makers and long-staying visitors together are nearly three times the sponsored workforce. And temporary skilled workers, the group employers worry about, are the smallest group on the table.

The targets

The Budget of 12 May 2026 set the path the Minister is now steering to.

Year	NOM forecast
2025–26	295,000
2026–27	245,000
2027–28 onwards	225,000

The 225,000 figure had originally been pencilled in for 2026–27. The Budget pushed it back a year because departures were slower than Treasury expected and New Zealand arrivals stayed strong. The opposition and One Nation have argued for deeper cuts still. Whatever the politics, the arithmetic is the same for anyone running the program: from roughly 292,000 to 245,000 in a year means about 47,000 fewer net arrivals, and the only levers that move that fast are temporary visas.

Why the cuts landed on temporary visas

Put the composition and the target side by side and the 17 September package reads as a list of the biggest blocks the government can move without touching an employer.

• Students are the largest group, so they took the largest measures: no family members on new student and graduate applications, no onshore switching from a visitor or working holiday visa to study, and a further student visa only for a higher-level course.
• Working holiday makers can only be cut at the second and third year, since the first year is written into reciprocal agreements. Hence a ballot capped at 45,000 second-year and 5,000 third-year places.
• Visitors who stay are the quiet leak. A visitor visa followed by an onshore student, partner or protection application turns a tourist into a 12-of-16-month resident. A No Further Stay condition on every new visitor grant closes that pipeline.
• Sponsored workers were left alone, apart from queue order. At 46,000 arrivals, cutting them would barely dent the number and would hit the health, construction and care employers the government has named as priorities. Direction 121 moved those sectors to the front of the queue instead.
• The permanent program is planned separately and most of it goes to people already in Australia. Changing it does little to NOM, which is why the headline planning level was left stable and only the points test was flagged for revision.

Fragomen’s net migration comparison of 24 September 2026 made a similar point across three countries: a single headline target tells you nothing about who arrives, why, or for how long. I would add that it tells a temporary visa holder a great deal about which door closes next.

What this means in practice

If you are on a temporary visa, you are the lever. Students, graduates, working holiday makers and visitors should assume further tightening, not relaxation, through 2027–28. Three of the September measures have no commencement date yet. Until the instrument is made, the current rules apply, which is the reason to lodge an eligible 485 with family, or a second-year working holiday application, now rather than wait.

If you are an employer, sponsorship is intact. Nothing about 482 or 186 eligibility changed. What changed is the queue. A nomination in a priority sector moves first; an offshore applicant with family in a non-priority occupation now sits at the back, and that can mean months. Plan start dates around the processing-times figures for your subclass, not the headline.

If you are on a permanent skilled pathway, the points test is the thing to watch. The government said it will revise the test to favour occupations that address the housing shortage, construction in particular. State nomination numbers are set in a separate allocation and were not touched by the package.

What I am watching

• The next ABS quarterly release, which will show whether the year to June 2026 landed near the 295,000 Budget forecast.
• The Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook in December, which can move the 2026–27 forecast again.
• The three instruments still to be made: visitor No Further Stay, the 485 family exclusion and the working holiday ballot. Each gets its own dated entry on the change log the day it lands.

If you want the entries as they land, the alerts list on the change log sends one email per change and nothing else. If you want to know which of this applies to your own file, that is a consultation, or a written pathway check if you would rather have it in writing without a call.

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Sources. ABS, Australia’s population grows 1.4% in March 2026, media release, 17 September 2026 (NOM 292,100; prior year 309,500; population and natural increase). ABS, Overseas Migration, 2024–25 financial year, released 19 December 2025 (NOM 306,000; arrivals and departures by visa group; peak of about 556,000 in the year to September 2023). ABS, Overseas Migration methodology, 2024–25 (the 12/16 month rule and the treatment of citizens and visitors). Commonwealth Budget 2026–27, 12 May 2026, as reported in KPMG Flash Alert 2026-124 (NOM forecasts by year). Minister for Home Affairs, National Press Club, 17 September 2026 (the reform package), as logged on the WIDEN change log. Fragomen, Net Migration Policy: An Explainer Comparing Australia, Canada and the UK, 24 September 2026.