The Australian Budget Just Dropped. Here's What It Actually Means If You're Trying to Get a Job Here.

By Leigh Raymond | Land Your Aussie Job

The Australian Federal Budget was released yesterday and there are implications for the job market. I won't take you through the whole budget.

What I want to talk about is the part that directly affects you - the skilled migrant who's either planning a move to Australia, already here and job hunting, or somewhere in between trying to figure out if this is even worth it.

Because there are a few things in this budget that change the picture. Not in a dramatic, everything-is-different way. But in a quiet, this-matters-more-than-you-think way.

Let me break it down simply.

First - the job market before the budget

Before we even get to what the government announced, you need to understand what the job market is doing right now. Because the budget lands on top of this, not instead of it.

 Two or three years ago, after COVID, Australian employers were desperate. They couldn't find people. If you had skills, you had options. That era is over.

 Job vacancies across Australia have dropped by almost 29% from their peak in 2022. And at the same time, the number of people applying for each job has gone up by 8.5%. Fewer jobs, more competition for each one.

In plain English: employers can afford to be picky again. They're not scrambling. They're choosing.

And here's what that means for international candidates specifically. When there are a lot of applications coming in, the first thing that happens is filtering. Fast. Most of the time that filtering isn't even done by a human - it's done by software that scans your CV for the right signals before any recruiter ever reads a word.

Most international CVs don't pass that filter. Not because the person isn't qualified. Because the CV wasn't built for the Australian system.

That was already happening before Tuesday night. The budget just adds another layer to it.

What the budget actually says

The total number of permanent migration places stays at 185,000 for the coming year. Same as before.

But only 55,110 of those places are now going to people applying from overseas. That's the smallest that number has been in ten years. The rest are being prioritised for people who are already in Australia on temporary visas.

On top of that, the government has said they want those offshore places to go to migrants who are better educated, younger, and higher-skilled. They're rewriting the points test - the system that determines who gets selected - for the first time since 2012.

The message from the government is clear: we still want skilled migrants, but we're going to be more selective, and we're going to favour people who are already here.

Why this makes the job market harder, not easier

Here's where I want to push back on a conclusion that might seem obvious but isn't right.

You might think: fewer migrants coming in means less competition for jobs. 

That's not how it works.

The people who don't get migration places don't disappear. A lot of them are already in Australia. A lot of them apply from overseas anyway. And the ones who do get through the new, more selective system? They're going to be stronger candidates than before. More qualified. Younger. Better positioned on paper.

So you're not competing with fewer people. You're competing with a more capable pool of people, in a market that already has more applicants than roles, filtered by a hiring system that cuts half the field before a recruiter gets involved.

The bottom line

The budget has made the pool smaller and the competition stronger. The job market was already shifting before Tuesday. Put those two things together and the cost of going in without understanding how this market works has just gone up.

The candidates who land jobs here - consistently, quickly, at the right level - aren't always the most qualified people in the pool. They're the ones who understood what Australian employers are actually looking for and made sure their application said it clearly.

That's the work worth doing before you start applying.

Leigh Duncan Raymond has 13+ years of Australian recruitment experience. She's been a recruiter, Head of Marketing, GM, and led a division at one of the top multinational recruitment firms in the country. She's also an immigrant to Australia herself. She founded Land Your Aussie Job to give skilled migrants the insider knowledge the system doesn't hand you. You can find her at landyouraussiejob.com