At 31 August 2026 there were 2,878,973 people in Australia on temporary visas. Take out New Zealand citizens, visitors and crew, and 1,825,403 remain. For years we have been told the intake is needed because businesses cannot find workers. This week the government's own list of hard-to-fill jobs got shorter again. The visas that list was used to justify did not.
What did the government find?
Every year Jobs and Skills Australia checks which jobs employers genuinely cannot fill. On Wednesday it published the 2026 list.
The list got shorter. Only 27 per cent of the jobs it checked are now short of workers, and that share is well down on 2023.
Put the other way, most jobs are not short of workers at all.
Which jobs dropped off?
The clearest change is in technology, where software is now doing more of the work itself.
Software testers and automation test engineers are no longer on the list. Software engineers were last on it in 2024. And the tech industry as a whole got smaller this year, for the first time.
The tech jobs still listed are a short, specialist group: cybersecurity, cloud and DevOps engineers. There are just six of them. These are the people who build and protect automated systems. They are not the junior roles those systems are replacing.
So why can't young people get hired?
Because a business saying it cannot find staff is not the same as there being no one to hire.
The agency explained the most common reason a job stays empty. It calls it a "suitability gap": plenty of people have the qualifications, but employers turn them down, often because they have no work experience.
That is the trap every school leaver and new graduate knows. You need experience to get the job, and you need the job to get experience.
Who are they up against?
Picture a 21-year-old from Penrith with a fresh business degree, applying for her first full-time job. She is not only competing with other locals.
She is competing with people on temporary graduate and skilled visas, who are allowed to work full time. Many of them are a few years older and already have some Australian work experience. When the employer picks experience, the visa settings have decided who was in the room.
The result shows up in the numbers. In September the unemployment rate for young people rose to 11.1 per cent, more than double the rate for everyone else.
To be fair about it: no official figure shows how much of that is caused by visa settings. The Bureau of Statistics does not measure it. But both groups are in the same queue for the same first jobs, and only one side of that queue is set by the government.
Where is the money going instead?
Into machines. The Treasurer told investors in Sydney this week that business investment is running well ahead of forecast.
A big part of that is data centres. ABC reporting on the speech put data centre investment in Australia at $35 billion so far this year, and said data centres for artificial intelligence have been a big factor in the year's investment.
Data centres do work without hiring people to do it. Checking, testing, drafting and answering routine questions are exactly the tasks a junior used to learn on. We think that is where this investment is heading. It is a judgement, not a measured result, but the shortage list is already moving the same way.
If the shortage is shrinking, why is the intake the same?
Because a shortage can end next year, and a visa pathway lasts decades.
The shortage list is checked every year and it goes up and down. Someone brought in on the strength of it can stay for the rest of their working life, long after the job that justified them has changed or gone.
The government knows the job market is softening. In the same speech the Treasurer said Treasury will forecast higher unemployment in December. You cannot expect more people to be out of work and keep bringing in workers on the claim that there are not enough of them.
Does Australia still need some skilled migrants?
Yes. The list still shows real gaps in some trades, technical jobs and professions, and those should be filled.
But if the intake really followed the shortage, it would shrink when the shortage shrinks. Ours does not. It is set as a target first and explained afterwards.
Who will actually bring it down?
One Nation is the only party with a number. Its plan would cut the temporary migrant population by 750,000 over three years.
During those three years more people would leave than arrive. After that, One Nation would hold net overseas migration to a cap, reviewed every year.
That is why One Nation should lead the next government, with the Liberals and the Nationals beside it. The Liberals have moved toward a lower intake. The Nationals understand what cheap energy and real industry do for wages. But only One Nation has put a cut on paper that matches what the government's own list is now saying.
The graduate from Penrith does not need a bigger shortage list. She needs a first job, and fewer people competing with her for it.
For who holds which visa and what work each one allows, see our pages on temporary visa occupations and the temporary visa population.