Australia: Draft Core Skills Occupation List for Proposed Skills in Demand Visa Released

Update September 16, 2025: JSA has now released the 2025 CSOL Targeted for Consultation Group list and is seeking feedback from a broad range of stakeholders, including businesses, state and territory governments, unions, and skills assessing and licensing authorities. The list is benchmarked against the new Occupation Standard Classification for Australia (OSCA), which was released on December 6, 2024, and does not reference Australia and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations (ANZSCO) codes. This reflects the government’s intent to phase out ANZSCO and move toward OSCA to provide a more locally relevant and contemporary framework for labour market classification. However, at this stage no transition schedule has been announced, and ANZSCO remains the official reference point for visa programs. 

Fragomen will be preparing a submission on the 2025 CSOL Targeted for Consultation Group list. We strongly encourage clients to also contribute to JSA’s consultation either by responding directly through JSA’s survey or submission process, or by sharing insights and data with Fragomen to help shape our collective response.

April 10, 2024: As part of Australia’s Migration Strategy for 2024, the government assigned Jobs and Skills Australia (JSA) to engage in consultation with different stakeholders (e.g., businesses, state and territory governments, unions, skills assessing and licensing authorities, foreign workers, among others) and conduct a market analysis to put together a draft list of in-demand occupations to be used under the Core Skills stream of the proposed Skills in Demand Visa.  In line with this, JSA released a draft Core Skills Occupation List (CSOL) and is currently seeking feedback from stakeholders. In the proposed draft, CSOL has been categorized into three groups: (1) Skilled occupations the JSA Migration Model is confident should be on the CSOL; (2) Skilled occupations the JSA Migration Model suggests should not be on the CSOL and targeted for consultation; and (3) Skilled occupations the JSA Migration Model suggests should be targeted for stakeholder feedback. Fragomen will provide feedback on the draft lists, and we encourage clients to participate in JSA’s consultations.