General Skilled Migration (SkillSelect)

What SkillSelect is

Australia's points-tested skilled migration, covering three visas: the 189 Skilled Independent, the 190 Skilled Nominated by a state or territory, and the 491 Skilled Work Regional, which is provisional for five years and converts to permanence through the 191.

You submit an expression of interest, receive a score, and wait to be invited. Sixty-five points is the minimum to submit at all. It is a floor, not a target, and treating it as a target is the most common misreading of the system.

How the points work

Age, English, skilled employment, qualifications, and a set of smaller factors — a partner with skills, an Australian study requirement, credentialled community language, professional year, specialist education.

Skilled employment is capped at 20 points in total, under Schedule 6D. Overseas and Australian experience are added together against that single cap, not scored separately. Eight years of each does not produce 35 points. This is the most common over-scoring error in Australian estimates, and it is worth re-checking any figure you have been given.

English is scored in bands: competent scores nothing, proficient scores 10, superior scores 20. Twenty points is a large fraction of a competitive score and it is retakeable.

The cut-off is not one number

Invitation rounds are run by occupation group. What matters is your ranking inside your group, not the national picture. Rounds in 2026 have invited trades occupations at 65 points while some professional groups sat far higher.

A score that looks hopeless in the abstract can be above the line in the right occupation, and a score that looks strong can sit unranked for a year in a crowded one. The occupation list is the first thing to check, not the last.

Skills assessment comes first

Before any of this, your occupation must be on the relevant list and your skills must be assessed by the designated authority for that occupation. The assessment is a separate process with its own timeline and its own fee, and it is not a formality — a negative assessment ends the matter regardless of points.

Where it goes wrong

Claiming employment that the assessing authority does not recognise as skilled. Counting years before the date the authority deems your skills to have met the standard. Both inflate a score that then fails at the application stage, after the money is spent.

Before you spend anything

Confirm your occupation is on the list that applies to the visa you want, and confirm which authority assesses it. Those two facts determine whether the rest of the exercise is worth starting, and neither costs anything to establish.