Migration tipped to plummet as post-COVID visas set to expire

Follow our live coverage of the 2025 federal election here.

Immigration numbers are likely to plummet as people on short-term visas start to leave the country en masse, pre-eminent demographers have predicted, amid signs birth rates will continue to ebb and expected lifespans falter.

Peter McDonald and Alan Gamlen, from the ANU Migration Hub, said the surge in migrants that has pushed Australia’s population to record highs – a key campaign issue – is already receding and this trend will start to accelerate.

Departures of migrant visa holders are expected to accelerate in coming years, according to leading demographers. Credit: Bloomberg

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has vowed to cut the official permanent migration intake by 25 per cent, while the government is forecasting net overseas migration, which includes visa holders and permanent immigrants, to ease from 446,000 in 2023-24 to 225,000 by 2028-29.

But McDonald and Gamlen said the surge in migration caused by a series of specific visas issued by the previous and the current government would start to rapidly recede as the terms of many of those visas begin to end in 2027.

The numbers include people from Britain and Ireland on working holiday visas that let them stay in the country for three years. There was a surge in these arrivals between September 2022 and 2024, helping take the number of young people on working holiday visas to a record 190,000, with many businesses using these workers.

A Coalition government policy to extend temporary work visas for people who could not return to their home nation because of COVID-related travel bans, plus a current government decision to extend from two to four years the length of the temporary graduate visa, had also swollen the number of non-permanent migrants.

According to McDonald and Gamlen, there are also 92,000 people on protection visas yet to be deported, while there are almost 350,000 on bridging visas who will have to leave the country in the next two to three years.

“Despite overseas migration reaching unprecedented levels in the 2022-23 financial year, net overseas migration to Australia has fallen by 100,000 in each of the past two years and it can be expected to continue falling at a moderate rate in the next two years,” they said.

“However, from around 2027, as the number of departures expands considerably, net overseas migration is likely to plummet.”

Migration numbers have been in a state of flux since the start of the decade. Net overseas migration hit a record low of minus 94,400 in the 12 months to the end of March 2021 during COVID-era restrictions. But by mid-2023, net overseas migration reached an all-time high of 555,000.

McDonald and Gamlen said much of the election debate over high migration levels ignored the economic impact that would flow from a sharp decline in migration.

“The bigger risk is that undue panic could induce knee-jerk migration cuts that cause migration levels to whipsaw up and down, instead of settling back to a more stable normal,” they said.

Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics last week revealed the number of departures were up by 19.3 per cent in the 12 months to the end of September. Over the same period, migrant numbers into the country fell by 18.2 per cent.

Despite the large swing in departures and arrivals, net overseas migration was still 380,000 over the 12-month period. In last week’s budget, net overseas migration was forecast to fall to 335,000 this financial year before edging down to 260,000 in 2025-26.

Without such high levels of migration, Australia’s population growth rate would collapse.

The budget revealed a substantial downgrade to the nation’s fertility rate – the number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifespan – and to projected lifespans.

Australians’ expected lifespans were downgraded in the budget.Credit: Wolter Peeters

The national fertility rate is expected to fall to a record low of 1.44 this financial year and then only increase marginally to 1.54 by 2028-29. A year ago, the budget assumed the fertility rate would be 1.64 this year and remain around that level for the rest of the decade.

The rate has been falling consistently since 2008. In his last budget as treasurer, Josh Frydenberg in 2022 assumed fertility would be 1.65 even though the rate at the time was already substantially lower.

The budget also downgraded life expectancy forecasts, which have been hit by increased deaths associated with COVID.

Last year, Jim Chalmers’ budget forecast a male born in 2025-26 would enjoy a lifespan of 82.3 years. This year, that is now 82.1 years. For women, expected lifespan has fallen from 86.1 years to 85.9 years.

In the 12 months to the end of September, 187,000 Australians died, an increase of almost 14 per cent compared to the year before the pandemic. Over the same period, births fell by 4.5 per cent.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.