Skilled Migration Update - 2014-15 Program Year

By Mark Webster Wednesday, 09 July 2014

Over the last week, there have been a number of important updates to the General Skilled Migration Program.

The main ones are as follows:

• Occupational ceilings have been announced for the 2014-15 year. There have been some significant changes to the number of places allocated to Engineers, Accountants, Teachers, IT Professionals, Constructions Trades and Chefs
• Occupational ceilings will no longer apply to state nominated 190 and 489 visas
• Several states have announced their occupations lists for the 2014-15 and started to accept applications

Occupational Ceilings

The occupational ceilings have been announced for the 2014-15 Financial Year.

Occupational Ceilings will no longer apply to State Nominated visas - they will only apply to Skilled - Independent Subclass 189 visas and family sponsored Skilled Regional Subclass 489 visas.

This means that states can nominate occupations for Skilled Nominated Subclass 190 and Skilled Regional Subclass 489 visas even if the ceiling has been reached.

As a result, occupational ceilings are only published for SOL Occupations, not all occupations on the CSOL List as in previous years.

There have also been some changes in the places available for certain occupations:

• Engineers: an additional 2,530 places - this is significant because these occupations were close to reaching occupational ceilings last year.
• Accountants: reduction of 4,242 places. Last program year, the ceiling was not close to being reached so we are hopeful that the ceiling reduction will not severely impact applicants
• Teachers: reduction of 1,170 places. Again, we were not even close to the ceiling last year in these occupations, so should have little impact
• IT Professionals: increase of 1,132 places. Important because these occupations were close to meeting the occupational ceiling last year
• Construction Trades: decrease of 2,168 places
• Chefs: decrease of 1,353 places - somewhat strange given the occupation was just added to the Skilled Occupations List

The occupational group with the largest ceiling is Registered Nurses - with 15,042 places, this is more than double the quota of any other occupational group.

State Nomination Update

A number of states have announced their new State Migration Plan Occupations Lists for 2014-15.

Here is a Summary of the current state of play:

State	Occupations List	Comments
NSW	Pending	190 Nominations to reopen 14 July
ACT	Pending	List to be reviewed Aug 2014
Qld	Released	Qld alumni and regional worker lists
Vic	Pending
Tas	Pending
SA	Released	Certain occupations are already limited availability
NT	Pending
WA	Pending

Conclusion

If you would like advice on how the changes to skilled migration will affect you, please Book a Consultation with one of our advisors.

References

SkillSelect - Occupational Ceilings