The federal government has deprioritised 218 occupations while escalating some 456 others – including a range of cyber security and ICT roles – as it works to boost flagging national productivity by focusing its evolving skilled visa program on the areas of highest need.

Designed “to replace complex, out of date and inflexible occupation lists in our temporary skilled visa program,” the government said its new Core Skills Occupation List (CSOL) has been shaped by extensive labour market analysis and Jobs and Skills Australia (JSA) stakeholder consultations.

Technology-related roles – including penetration testers, cyber governance risk and compliance specialists, network administrators, ICT quality assurance engineers, and devops engineers – feature heavily on the list, which is a subset of the larger, 674-strong Skilled Occupation List.

No Australian workers available

The CSOL will apply to the Core Skills stream of the new Skills in Demand visa, helping companies fill positions “where no Australian workers are available,” the government said in announcing the list as a prelude to additional reforms to be announced later this week.

The Skills in Demand visa will replace the Temporary Skill Shortage (482) visa from 7 December, and will also apply to the Direct Entry stream of the permanent Employer Nomination Scheme (186) visa.

Over 700 occupations are “in scope for potential inclusion” on the CSOL, with JSA evaluating jobs based on economic and recruitment activity – and decisions about which to include made by weighing issues such as whether migrants stay in nominated occupations for years after arriving.

The organisation also considers how important sponsored skilled visa holders are to the workforce relative to total employment and job vacancies; the pipeline of graduates from the Australian education and training sectors; and the market salary for occupations.

The CSOL “plays an important role in ensuring Australia has a targeted skilled migration system that addresses genuine skills gaps in the economy,” Minister for Skills and Training Andrew Giles said, “and works in conjunction with our work to train Australians.”

Can the right skills reverse economic malaise?

Although it includes a range of ICT-related jobs, the CSOL has particularly been designed to reinvigorate the building and construction industry – which was explicitly mentioned during the announcement by both Giles and Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs Tony Burke.

The CSOL “is prioritising workers who can help to build the houses Australians need,” Giles said, with Burke adding that he “is determined to tackle the skills shortage, especially in the construction sector. This is an important step to attract qualified workers to build more homes.”

Stimulating key economic sectors was already core to the government’s economic strategy before newly released Australian National Accounts figures worried economists by showing Australia’s GDP rose just 0.4 per cent during the September quarter and 0.8 per cent over the past year.

With consumption “flat” and discretionary consumption “[going] backwards”, Treasurer Jim Chalmers told Sky News that the government’s investments “are all about helping people with the cost of living, fighting inflation and making our economy more productive.”

Jumpstarting ‘flatlined’ productivity – which the government has been addressing by overhauling migration, revisiting cyber and other ICT job classifications and prioritising Australia’s most-needed jobs after the morale-killing, workplace-disrupting COVID-19 pandemic – will take time.

Nation-building efforts

With migration policy recently identified as “a key lever for Australia’s nation-building efforts,” the CSOL’s creation reflects the government’s effort to make evidence-based decisions about which jobs on the former SOL – which was updated in 2019 for the first time in a decade – to prioritise.

JSA’s Migration Labour Market Indicator Model, which grew out of the new Migration Strategy announced by the government last December, will inform the ongoing management of the CSOL alongside what the government called “deep stakeholder engagement”.

And while recent figures show some ICT jobs are no longer facing skills shortages, ongoing demand in the ICT sector ensured they made the new short list – along with many jobs whose inclusion was required by Australia’s international trade agreements – even as 218 SOL occupations did not.

By focusing Australia’s skilled migration program on creating opportunities for “skilled migrants who will make a significant contribution to the Australian economy,” the government hopes it can bring in skilled migrants to reverse festering skills gaps that are holding back economic growth.

Other industry sectors specifically called out by the responsible ministers include the agriculture, cyber security, health, and education sectors.