Glossary
Migration debates often blur permanent places, temporary flows, student arrivals, and net population change. This page keeps the working definitions close to the simulator.
The net gain or loss of population through international migration. It counts people who are in Australia for 12 months or more over a 16-month period, less people who leave Australia for 12 months or more.
NOM is the headline population-pressure measure. It includes permanent and temporary movement, so it is broader than the permanent migration program.The annual planning level for permanent visas across Skill, Family, and smaller Special Eligibility categories.
Permanent places shape long-run workforce and fiscal outcomes, but they are only one part of total migration flows.Permanent migration places aimed at applicants selected for labour-market, business, investment, regional, or employer-sponsored reasons.
The skill stream is where migration policy most directly tries to lift productivity, tax revenue, and workforce capacity.The main applicant in a skilled visa case, as distinct from partners or dependants who are included as secondary applicants.
Treasury modelling assigns very different lifetime fiscal and GDP impacts to primary skilled migrants, secondary skilled migrants, and family-stream migrants.The time it takes for a migrant's overseas qualification, licence, or occupation-specific experience to be recognised and used in Australia.
Shorter recognition lags mean the same migration intake can contribute sooner, especially in licensed trades, health, engineering, and technical roles.A rough estimate of how many dwellings are needed to house a migration flow, calculated here by dividing NOM by an assumed household size.
It translates population movement into the housing-capacity question voters and cities actually feel.The share of overseas migration settling in major capital cities rather than regional areas or smaller cities.
Migration can be economically useful nationally while still intensifying pressure in specific rental markets, transport systems, and service networks.The value Australia earns from international students through tuition and related travel spending recorded in the balance of payments.
International education is a major export industry, but high student inflows can also add housing and city pressure.An estimate of the lifetime budget contribution of a migrant cohort, converted into today's dollars.
It helps separate short-term service pressure from long-run tax and spending effects.The annualised home-building pace implied by Australia's national housing targets and recent completions data.
The same NOM setting looks very different if the country is completing 175k homes a year versus running closer to 240k.