The current debate over Australia’s migrant intake may have been distorted by selective interpretations of migration data and hijacked for political purposes, new data suggests.

Using a ‘fixed point projection’, Melbourne University demographer Peter McDonald found that by March 2024, Australia had 319,000 fewer arrivals and 286,000 fewer departures than expected.

According to his calculations, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a statistical surplus of 2,000 arrivals in 2019, then a shortfall of 451,000 during lockdowns.

Since Australia re-opened, this has been partially offset by a rebound of 418,000 migrants so far.

By March 2024, net overseas migration (NOM) had added 31,000 fewer people to the population than it would have if migration had stayed at 2019 levels.

Prof McDonald says that if the current rate of decline continues, we’ll reach the ‘June 2019 normal’ baseline in early 2025, accumulating a further 128,000 rebound arrivals in the meantime.

Using a trend-based projection, ANU migration expert Professor Alan Gamlen has predicted what ‘normal’ would’ve been if COVID-19 hadn’t happened.

“I used easily accessible ABS data from 2013 to 2019 to generate a simple linear trend and extrapolate that forward in time,” he says.

“This suggests a cumulative net overseas migration shortfall of 611,000 arrivals and 443,000 departures by March 2024.

Basically, net overseas migration added 168,000 fewer people to Australia’s population between 2019 and 2024 than if net overseas migration had followed its long-term 2013-2019 trend.

“This is the difference between a pandemic migration shortfall of 508,000, and a post-pandemic NOM rebound of 340,000 to March 2024.

“If the migration decline continues at the current rate, we’ll return to the 2013 to 2019 trend-line in early mid-2025.

“By then, the migration rebound would have added 86,000 more to the population, bringing the total cumulative post-pandemic NOM surplus to 426,000.

“This still wouldn’t fully offset the cumulative pandemic NOM shortfall of 508,000.”

Prof Gamlen says the debate about migration levels has become a political construct.

“Defining ‘normal’ migration is more political than technical. Should we aim to return to pre-pandemic levels, or set a new normal? Opinions differ widely,” Prof Gamlen says in a recent policy brief.

“Some argue pre-pandemic migration was too high, citing infrastructure, housing, environmental and other concerns.

“Others say migration is too low, citing concerns like skills and labour shortages driving inflation. The facts are often lost in this debate.

“What’s clear is that Australia has experienced less migration since the onset of the pandemic, not more.

“The simplest measure of this is Total Migration – arrivals plus departures; it counts migrants travelling in both directions across Australia’s border.

“In the five and a half years since the pandemic hit, total migration has reached 13.9 million. In the five and a half years preceding, it was 15.1 million.

“Cumulatively, for the period since the pandemic, total migration is lower by 1.2 million migrants than for the same period prior. This is mainly because departures plummeted during the pandemic and have still not recovered much at all.

“Contrary to claims of record-high migration, Australia is still far from catching up to the levels of migration that, in the pre-pandemic world, we expected to have had by now.

“The real debate isn’t when migration will return to ‘normal’. It is what ‘normal’ should look like. This is an important question, and it must be informed by facts, not fear of disinformation,” Prof Gamlen says.

Read Prof Gamlen’s paper: https://policybrief.anu.edu.au/when-will-migration-return-to-normal/