Australian immigration turns sharply negative

Monday 18 January 2021

On Friday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released overseas arrivals and departures data for November, which revealed that immigration has turned sharply negative.

As shown in the next chart, long-term departures exceeded long-term arrivals by 19,270 in the 8 months to November 2020:

This has reduced annual long-term arrivals to only 93,410 in the year to November 2020, the lowest number since 1999:

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About the author

Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.