AUSTRALIA SKILLS IN DEMAND VISA 2026: OCCUPATION LIST AND SALARY THRESHOLD

Two questions decide whether an Australia Skills in Demand visa application is worth starting: is your job on the list, and does the offer pay enough? Everything else the degree, the references, the medicals, the police certificates from every country you have lived in sits behind those two answers.

Applicants underestimate this constantly. A strong CV cannot rescue an occupation that is not listed, and a glowing reference cannot lift a salary that falls a thousand dollars short.

QUICK ANSWER: Australia’s Skills in Demand visa (subclass 482) has three streams. The Core Skills stream requires your occupation to appear on the Core Skills Occupation List and the role to pay at least AUD 79,423 a year for nominations lodged from 1 July 2026. The Specialist Skills stream requires no occupation list but sets the bar at AUD 146,576. Both figures rise every July.

THE CYCLE THAT GOVERNS THIS VISA

When	What it means for you
December 2024	The Skills in Demand visa replaced the older Temporary Skill Shortage framework and introduced the three-stream structure
1 July 2026	Income thresholds rose by roughly 3.8%; visa application charges climbed steeply
25 July 2026	New processing priorities brought subclass 482 into a formal queue system for the first time
Every 1 July	Salary thresholds reset automatically — this is an annual event, not a one-off
Expected	A revised occupation list following the 2025 consultation round

RIGHT NOW: WHICH AUSTRALIA SKILLS IN DEMAND VISA STREAM YOUR JOB ACTUALLY FALLS INTO

Before you research anything else, work out which of the three doors you are standing in front of. They test different things, and applicants routinely prepare for the wrong one.

The Core Skills stream is the main road. It carries the large majority of grants and is built for people whose occupation appears on the published list — nurses, engineers, secondary teachers, chefs, electricians, most software and infrastructure roles. If you are reading this from India, the Philippines, Nepal, Nigeria, Brazil or the UK and you hold a recognised trade or professional qualification, this is almost certainly your stream.

The Specialist Skills stream works on money rather than lists. There is no occupation list to satisfy at all, provided the role sits inside the professional, managerial, clerical, sales or service classifications; trades workers, machinery operators, drivers and labourers are excluded from it by design. No skills assessment is required, and the department has committed to a fast median turnaround for clean applications — a genuine advantage if you are being recruited into a senior technical or executive role from overseas.

The third door runs through a labour agreement negotiated between a specific employer or industry and the Australian government. There is no single published salary figure here. The terms of that agreement set the bar, which is why aged care, disability support, agriculture and some hospitality roles can be sponsored at pay levels the Core Skills stream would reject.

Choosing wrongly is not a small error. You will spend weeks assembling evidence for a test you were never going to be assessed against.

TODAY: CHECK YOUR OCCUPATION AGAINST THE CORE SKILLS OCCUPATION LIST

The Core Skills Occupation List is a single consolidated list of roughly 456 occupations, compiled from labour market analysis and industry consultation. It replaced the older split between medium-term and short-term lists for this visa, which had become slow to update and confusing to read.

Those older lists have not disappeared. They still govern the points-tested and state-nominated visas, so an occupation missing from this particular list is not automatically excluded from Australian skilled migration altogether — it just closes off employer sponsorship through this route.

The coverage is genuinely broad. Health dominates it — nursing, general practice, physiotherapy, pharmacy, midwifery, laboratory science — alongside software and cyber security roles, civil and mechanical engineering, licensed trades such as electrical work, plumbing, carpentry and welding, early childhood and secondary teaching, and professional kitchen roles.

Three practical warnings, in the order they usually cause damage.

Match the duties, not the job title. Occupation codes describe tasks. A “Project Manager” in one company is a construction manager, in another an ICT project manager, in another something that maps to no listed occupation at all. The nominated code has to reflect what you will genuinely spend your working week doing, because that is what an assessing officer will test.

Check for caveats. Some entries carry restrictions — business size, industry setting, location, or the type of establishment. A listed occupation with an unmet caveat behaves exactly like an unlisted one.

Use the live version. The list is designed to be updated more frequently than the framework it replaced, and a revision has been signalled following the most recent consultation round. Occupations can be added and removed. A copy someone forwarded you last year is not evidence of your eligibility today.

WHY THE LIST KEEPS MOVING

Australia now sets this list against measured shortage data rather than lobbying pressure. Health, education, construction and regional trades have consistently shown the deepest gaps, and those categories tend to be protected when the list is revised. Discretionary and easily-domestically-filled roles are the ones that get trimmed.

For an international applicant, the strategic reading is simple. If your occupation sits in a shortage category, your position is relatively stable across list revisions. If it sits at the margin, lodge while you can rather than waiting for a better job offer.

THIS WEEK: WORK OUT WHETHER THE SALARY CLEARS THE CORE SKILLS INCOME THRESHOLD

Here is where most eligibility questions are actually settled.

For nominations lodged from 1 July 2026, the Core Skills Income Threshold stands at AUD 79,423, up from AUD 76,515, while the Specialist Skills Income Threshold sits at AUD 146,576, up from AUD 141,210. The increase reflects annual indexation against national average earnings data. The same lower figure also governs the regional employer-sponsored programs.

Threshold	Previous year	From 1 July 2026	Applies to
Core Skills Income Threshold	$76,515	$79,423	482 Core Skills stream, and permanent employer nomination
Specialist Skills Income Threshold	$141,210	$146,576	482 Specialist Skills stream
Regional / temporary skilled threshold	$76,515	$79,423	Regional sponsored programs
Labour agreement stream	—	Set by agreement	482 Labour Agreement stream

A word of caution on these numbers. Forecasts published early in 2026 anticipated a slightly larger rise and circulated figures of $79,499 and $146,717. Those numbers are still visible on plenty of websites. The confirmed figures reported after the reset are the ones in the table above. Before you commit to anything financially, verify directly with the Department of Home Affairs — this is exactly the kind of detail that goes stale on secondary sites.

CLEARING THE THRESHOLD IS ONLY HALF THE TEST

This is the part that catches people out, particularly applicants coming from lower-wage labour markets who assume the published figure is the finish line.

The threshold is a floor. Separately, the role must be paid at the going market rate for that job in that part of Australia. Whichever number is higher is the one your contract has to meet. A civil engineering role in Sydney might carry a genuine market rate well above the threshold; offering the bare minimum in that situation will not survive assessment.

The salary must also be real cash. Accommodation, a vehicle, relocation support and similar benefits are common in international recruitment, and they are valuable but they cannot be counted toward the minimum. Your base salary has to clear the bar on its own.

For readers converting mentally into their own currency: at prevailing rates the Core Skills figure lands somewhere around USD 51,000–53,000, though that comparison is misleading in isolation. Australian living costs, superannuation contributions and tax treatment change the picture substantially, and the threshold is set against Australian wage levels rather than international purchasing power.

BEFORE THE NOMINATION IS LODGED: FOUR THINGS THAT MUST ALREADY BE TRUE

The nomination stage is where preventable refusals cluster. Work through this before anyone presses submit.

☐ The employer is an approved sponsor, or has applied to become one. No amount of enthusiasm from a hiring manager substitutes for the sponsorship approval itself.

☐ The recruitment advertising is still current. Employers generally have to demonstrate they genuinely tested the local labour market within a defined window before lodging, and that window expires. Advertising that has gone stale is one of the most common and most avoidable reasons a file stalls.

☐ The stream, the occupation code and the salary agree with each other. These three elements are assessed as a set. An inconsistency between them reads as carelessness at best and misrepresentation at worst.

☐ The employment contract states base salary in unambiguous cash terms. Conditional bonuses, discretionary allowances and vague remuneration language invite a request for further information, and every such request adds weeks.

On your side of the file, you will generally need around a year of relevant recent work experience a meaningful relaxation from the older framework along with an English result and, for the Core Skills stream, a positive skills assessment from the authority that covers your occupation. That last point matters especially for international applicants: assessing authorities differ by occupation and often by country of qualification, and their own processing times run in parallel with everything else. Start that piece early.

BEFORE 1 JULY: THE ANNUAL RESET THAT CATCHES PEOPLE EVERY YEAR

Australia’s migration year turns on 1 July, and the salary thresholds move with it.

The mechanism is automatic. Indexation is written into the regulations and tied to national earnings data, which means no announcement, debate or new legislation is required for the figures to rise. They simply do, every year.

What matters operationally is which figure applies to you. The threshold is fixed by the date the nomination is lodged, not the date it is decided. A nomination filed before the reset is assessed against the old figure even if the decision arrives months later. A nomination filed a day after the reset must meet the new one.

That single rule creates a predictable annual scramble. Employers with applications close to ready push them through in June. Employers who miss the window have to revisit salary bands before they can proceed. If you are negotiating an offer in May or June from overseas, raise this with the employer directly it is the kind of timing point a busy hiring manager will not have on their radar, and it can decide whether your offer works.

THE COST RESET ARRIVES ON THE SAME DAY

Fees move on the same date, and in 2026 they moved sharply. The visa application charge for the subclass 482 rose to AUD 4,015 for the primary applicant and for accompanying family members aged 18 or over, with a lower charge of AUD 1,005 for children under 18 up from AUD 3,210 the previous year

Employers carry their own costs on top, including a training levy that is generally AUD 1,200 per year of sponsorship for smaller businesses and AUD 1,800 per year for larger ones, alongside sponsorship and nomination charges. –

For a family of four applying from overseas, the government charges alone run into five figures before health examinations, English testing, document translation, skills assessment fees or professional advice. Budget for the whole picture rather than the headline number, and check current pricing on the department’s own estimator, since published figures on third-party sites drift out of date quickly.

One rule protects you here: employers are legally prohibited from passing their sponsorship costs on to the worker. If a prospective sponsor asks you to fund the levy or the nomination, that is not a negotiation — it is a breach.

SINCE LATE JULY 2026: WHERE YOUR FILE NOW SITS IN THE QUEUE

This is the development that most published guidance has not absorbed, and for international applicants it may be the single most consequential change of the year.

From 25 July 2026, a new ministerial direction restructured processing priorities across the skilled program, and the Skills in Demand visa was brought inside that framework for the first time. Previously it sat outside the queue system entirely.

The new order works through five tiers, combining occupation with the applicant’s location. Law enforcement and defence occupations rank highest, followed by healthcare, teaching and construction roles where the applicant is already in Australia, then all other onshore applications, with remaining offshore applications last..

Read that carefully if you are applying from outside Australia, because it is a structural disadvantage rather than a temporary backlog. Two candidates with identical qualifications and identical sponsors can now sit in different tiers purely because one lodged while onshore.

There are real implications for planning. If you are already in Australia on a student or graduate visa and considering sponsorship, lodging before your current visa expires materially improves your queue position. If you are offshore, build a longer runway into your expectations, particularly outside the priority occupation groups.

Two things this change does not do. It does not alter eligibility — the same criteria apply regardless of tier. And it does not guarantee a timeframe. Priority governs the order in which files are picked up, not how quickly they are decided.

The direction also applies to applications that were already lodged and awaiting a decision when it commenced, so existing applicants may find their position has shifted without any action on their part.

IF YOU HAVE MISSED THE THRESHOLD, OR THE LIST

Falling short on one test does not always end the conversation. Work through the alternatives in order.

The salary is close but under. Fix this before lodging, never after. A nomination filed below the threshold is refused and the money is gone. A nomination filed two weeks later at the correct figure is assessed on its merits.

The occupation is not listed, but the pay is high. The Specialist Skills stream ignores the occupation list entirely for eligible professional and managerial roles. If the offer clears the higher threshold, this route may be open even when the Core Skills stream is closed.

The pay is below the threshold in a critical sector. Aged care, disability support and certain regional industries are served through labour agreement arrangements precisely because market wages there sit under the standard floor. Ask whether your prospective employer holds or can access such an agreement.

Neither fits. Look sideways rather than giving up. The points-tested and state-nominated pathways use different occupation lists and different tests, and a role that fails employer sponsorship may still qualify elsewhere — particularly through regional programs, which consistently apply broader occupation coverage.

THE PERMANENT RESIDENCE PATHWAY, AND THE GAP INSIDE IT

All three streams now lead somewhere. After a qualifying period of full-time work in the nominated occupation — currently two years — sponsored workers can generally be nominated for permanent residence through the employer nomination scheme, whose salary requirement is aligned with the Core Skills figure.

The visa itself typically allows a stay of up to four years, with a longer allowance available to Hong Kong passport holders.

Here is the detail that rarely appears in general guidance, and it is worth more than most of the rest of this article combined. Workers now have a generous window — around 180 days — to find a new sponsor if their employment ends. That mobility is a genuine improvement on the older, punishing 60-day rule. But the clock toward permanent residence does not necessarily keep running through that window while you are between approved nominations. Time spent in limbo can fail to count toward the qualifying period.

The practical consequence: if you are planning to change employers, get the new nomination moving before the gap opens, not after. People lose months this way without ever being told they have.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Core Skills stream: listed occupation plus at least AUD 79,423 — or the market rate, if that is higher.
• Specialist Skills stream: AUD 146,576, no occupation list, no skills assessment, professional and managerial roles only.
• The applicable threshold is fixed by the lodgement date, not the decision date.
• Thresholds and fees reset every 1 July. Plan offers and timing around it.
• The visa application charge rose to AUD 4,015 for the primary applicant from July 2026.
• Since late July 2026, onshore applicants generally sit ahead of offshore applicants in the processing queue.
• Confirm the live occupation list before lodging. Every time.

WHERE THIS LEAVES YOU

For skilled workers anywhere in the world, this remains one of the most navigable employer-sponsored routes into a high-income country — one year of experience rather than two, a two-year run to permanent residence, and a genuine mobility window if a job ends badly. The trade-off is that both gate checks are unforgiving and both move on a fixed annual cycle, so the difference between a smooth application and an expensive refusal is usually timing rather than merit. If your occupation is listed and the offer clears both the threshold and the market rate, start now; if either test fails, fix it before lodging rather than hoping an officer looks past it.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS