The Australia Migration Model (TAMM)

Unofficial Australian migration settings simulator

Can migration pay its way?

Test how Australia's migration settings change the balance between fiscal dividend, skills use, education exports, housing demand, and capital-city pressure.

Narrative

The useful question is not just how many people arrive.

It is whether the mix of migrants, the speed of skills use, and the pace of housing delivery are moving together. Strong migration settings create capacity; weak settings can turn the same flow into pressure.

Dividend Pressure
Net overseas migration 295,000 12/16-month rule; short tourist visits excluded
Migration dwelling demand 118,000 67% of annual completions
Permanent cohort fiscal NPV $14.6B $445.5B GDP NPV; 79k fiscal NPV each
International education exports $53.6B 551,717 active students; about $97k each per year
Scenario read Budget forecast with tight housing
Contribution stack 71
Pressure stack 52
Migration balance score

Higher is better. The letter is an A-E rating: A is strongest, E means overheating.

61 /100
Grade C Balanced but tight

At 61/100, benefits still lead, but the buffer is thin. The long-term dividend scores 71 against pressure of 52, so the scenario is positive but still tight on housing and city capacity.

Score

Higher is better. The balance score is a 0-100 index with an A-E rating. Grade C means benefits are still ahead of pressure, but the buffer is not yet comfortable.

Fiscal NPV

A cohort is one annual permanent-program intake. Fiscal NPV equals weighted lifetime fiscal value per migrant multiplied by permanent places.

Education exports

The dollar figure is total annual sector value. The baseline is $53.6B across about 552k active international students: $23.5B in tuition fees and $29.9B in goods and services.

Building trades

The current building-trades base is about 2.6k skilled-primary applicants, or 4.3% of the skilled-primary stream. A 2.0x setting is about 5.2k applicants, or 8.6%. The model converts only the extra intake into effective housing capacity.

What the levers mean

The 0-100 balance score compares an economic dividend stack with a capacity-pressure stack. The score improves when the permanent program selects more skilled primary applicants, when overseas skills are used quickly, and when housing delivery can absorb the added demand. It falls when high volume, student arrivals, and capital-city concentration add pressure faster than capacity expands.

The underlying ABS, Treasury, Budget, housing, education, and Home Affairs references are collected on the Sources page.