We know that Australia's immigration virtually came to a halt over Covid, but that's changing now.
Our recovery in net migration recovery continued in October.
In fact, arrivals and departures data for October showed ongoing normalisation in long-term net arrivals with a net of 21,000 people in the month.
Net permanent and long-term arrivals show continued normalisation
Permanent and long-term arrivals have been around their monthly pre-pandemic levels since March and are on track to meeting budget forecasts of population growth returning to 1.4% a year by mid-2023.
Mr Taylor Nugent, Markets Economist at NAB said:
"Net arrivals had been weighed by higher numbers of permanent and long-term departures but these have started to ease.
As for total arrivals which include short-term arrivals for tourism, amongst other things, preliminary data for November is consistent with continued gradual recovery.
Total movements that also include short-term arrivals though were 32% below pre-pandemic November 2019 levels, reflecting a slower recovery in tourism."
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Recovery in arrivals has lagged from Asia
The recovery in total arrivals has varied sharply by country.
Arrivals from New Zealand, the UK, Singapore and the US are between 20 and 40% below their pre-pandemic levels.
Key sources of student arrivals in India and Nepal have fully recovered their pre-pandemic arrivals levels in the month.
In contrast, arrivals from much of Asia are still less than a third of their pre-pandemic levels.
China was the second largest source of arrivals in October 2019, but arrivals this month were just 7% of that level.
A fuller recovery of international student and tourism inflows is likely in time as China continues to pivot away from zero-COVID.
