Core Skills Income Threshold 2026: A$79,423 Explained

Two Different Core Skills Income Thresholds Are Circulating for 2026 — and Your Offer Might Sit Between Them

If you are holding an Australian job offer and trying to work out whether the salary is high enough to sponsor you, there is a problem before you even start. Search the threshold today and you will be given two different numbers, roughly seventy-six dollars apart.

Seventy-six dollars sounds like nothing. It is not nothing if your offer lands between them.

The figure: From 1 July 2026, Australia’s Core Skills Income Threshold is A$79,423 a year, up from A$76,515 — an increase of 3.9%, indexed under Regulation 5.42A against Average Weekly Ordinary Time Earnings. The Specialist Skills Income Threshold rose to A$146,576. Both apply to nominations lodged on or after 1 July 2026.

Why two numbers are circulating

Here is what happened, and it is worth understanding because the same thing will happen again next July.

The thresholds are indexed annually on 1 July, and the indexation is forecast before it is confirmed. Through March, April and May 2026, migration advisers published the expected figures — A$79,499 for the Core Skills threshold and A$146,717 for the Specialist threshold. Those numbers went into blog posts, explainer pages and news aggregators, and many of them have never been updated.

Then commencement arrived. Every adviser publishing from early July onward — Vialto Partners, BDO Australia, and Australian migration firms reporting after the change took effect — reports the Core Skills Income Threshold at A$79,423 and the Specialist Skills Income Threshold at A$146,576.

The pattern is consistent enough to be readable: the higher pair were forecasts, the lower pair are the figures in force. If you find a page carrying A$79,499, check its publication date. It is almost certainly from before July.

One more warning while you are checking. At least one widely syndicated page states the Specialist threshold stayed pegged at A$135,000. That figure does not match any source published after commencement and should be disregarded entirely.

Because your money is involved, confirm the current figure on the Department of Home Affairs website before you sign anything. That is the only source that is not a copy.

Why the gap matters more than it looks

Imagine an employer offers you A$79,450.

Against the forecast figure, that offer fails. Against the figure actually in force, it clears — by twenty-seven dollars.

Now imagine the reverse: you read the confirmed figure, accept an offer at A$79,430, and the employer’s adviser has been working from a page carrying the higher number. They tell you the role does not qualify and withdraw it.

Neither of those is a hypothetical kind of problem. Salary offers cluster just above thresholds, because employers build offers around the minimum they are permitted to pay. The band immediately above the threshold is the busiest band in the whole system, which is exactly why an outdated figure does real damage there.

If your offer is within a few hundred dollars of the line, treat the number as the most important fact in your application and verify it directly.

The bigger mistake: treating the threshold as the requirement

This is where most jobseekers go wrong, and it costs more than the seventy-six dollars ever will.

Meeting the Core Skills Income Threshold does not mean your nomination will be approved. The threshold is a floor. Sitting above it is a second test called the Annual Market Salary Rate — what an equivalent Australian worker would be paid for the same role in the same location.

Sponsors must satisfy both. The effective minimum is whichever figure is higher.

So if the market rate for your occupation in Sydney is A$95,000, an offer at A$79,500 clears the threshold and fails anyway. The threshold has done nothing for you. And in the great majority of skilled roles in Australian capital cities, the market rate is the binding number, not the threshold.

Practical translation for a jobseeker: stop asking whether the offer clears A$79,423. Ask what the role pays in that city, and whether your offer is credible against it. If your offer is noticeably below what the job advertises for locally, that is the risk in your application — not the threshold.

Two more details worth carrying:

• The test is applied to the full-time equivalent salary. Part-time work can be pro-rated, but the full-time equivalent figure must clear the threshold.
• The obligation does not end at approval. Sponsors must keep paying in line with the approved nomination, and must not pay a sponsored worker less than an equivalent Australian worker doing the same job in the same place. Breaching that can lead to warnings, infringement notices, civil penalty proceedings, sponsor bars and public listing under the Migration Act 1958.

That last point is a protection for you. If your pay quietly drops below what was nominated after you arrive, that is a breach by the sponsor, not a situation you simply have to accept.

Which threshold applies to which visa

The names get confusing because Australia runs several thresholds at once. This is the map.

Core Skills Income Threshold — A$79,423. Applies to nominations under the Core Skills stream of the Skills in Demand visa (subclass 482), to Employer Nomination Scheme (subclass 186) nominations lodged on or after 7 December 2024, and to certain labour agreement pathways. The Core Skills stream also requires your occupation to appear on the Core Skills Occupation List.

Specialist Skills Income Threshold — A$146,576. Applies to the Specialist Skills stream of subclass 482 — high-income professional and executive roles.

Temporary Skilled Migration Income Threshold — A$79,423. The older term has not disappeared. It applies to the Skilled Employer Sponsored Regional visa (subclass 494) and the Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme (subclass 187). It tracks the same figure as the Core Skills threshold, but it is a separate instrument, and older regional and Designated Area Migration Agreement documents still use the TSMIT name.

Labour Agreement stream. No flat figure. The applicable rate comes from the specific agreement, which is why regional and DAMA arrangements sometimes permit concessions.

Essential Skills stream. As of mid-2026 this third stream of the Skills in Demand visa was still under development, and is expected to use a sector-specific framework rather than a single salary threshold. If somebody offers you a job under the Essential Skills stream today, ask them to show you the instrument it operates under.

The lodgement date rule — and why timing beats the number

This is the detail that resolves most of the confusion people have about which threshold applies to them.

The figure that governs your case is the one in force on the date the nomination is lodged — not the date it is decided.

A nomination lodged on 28 June 2026 is assessed against A$76,515, even if a case officer decides it in September. A nomination lodged on 2 July is assessed against A$79,423. Nobody needs to re-lodge or supply updated salary evidence because the calendar rolled over while their file sat in a queue. Existing visa holders are not affected at all.

Two things follow from that.

If your nomination went in before 1 July and someone is now telling you the salary is short, check the lodgement date before you panic. The old figure may still be the one that counts.

And if you are negotiating an offer now, remember this indexation happens every 1 July. An offer built exactly on this year’s floor becomes a below-threshold offer for any future nomination — a renewal, a change of employer, a move to permanent residence through subclass 186. Building in headroom is not greed. It is planning.

Other costs that moved on 1 July

Salary was not the only thing indexed. Visa application charges also rose with effect from 1 July 2026, adjusted in line with forecast Consumer Price Index and rounded to the nearest five dollars.

If you budgeted for this move using figures from a page written in the last program year, both your salary benchmark and your application costs are out of date. Rebuild the budget from current sources.

What to actually do with this

If you are a sponsored-job seeker looking at Australia, the sequence is short.

1. Confirm the current threshold on the Department of Home Affairs site. Not a blog, not this page.
2. Check that your occupation is on the Core Skills Occupation List, if you are being nominated in the Core Skills stream.
3. Research what your role genuinely pays in that specific city, and compare it to your offer. That is the number most likely to sink a nomination.
4. Ask your employer when the nomination will be lodged, because that date fixes the threshold.
5. Get the offered salary in writing, as a full-time equivalent annual figure.

None of that requires a migration agent. All of it is worth doing before you resign from anything.

Key Takeaways

• The Core Skills Income Threshold from 1 July 2026 is A$79,423, up from A$76,515 — a 3.9% indexation under Regulation 5.42A based on AWOTE.
• The Specialist Skills Income Threshold rose to A$146,576 from A$141,210.
• The figure A$79,499 was a pre-commencement forecast and still appears on pages written before July. Verify against Home Affairs.
• The threshold is a floor. The Annual Market Salary Rate sits alongside it, and the higher figure governs.
• The applicable threshold is fixed by the nomination lodgement date, not the decision date. Existing holders are unaffected.
• TSMIT still applies to subclasses 494 and 187 and currently tracks the same A$79,423 figure.
• Visa application charges also increased on 1 July 2026 in line with forecast CPI.

FAQ