Australia’s fertility rate sits at roughly 1.48 births per woman, close to 30% below the 2.1 replacement level a country needs to hold its population steady through births alone. That single number explains why nearly every other figure in Australia’s population story now revolves around migration: in the year to December 2025, net overseas migration added 301,000 people to Australia’s population, compared with just 111,500 from natural increase, meaning roughly 73% of all population growth came from people moving to the country rather than being born in it.
This is not a new pattern so much as an intensifying one. Australia’s overseas-born population reached 8.8 million as of 30 June 2025, or 32.0% of the total population, the highest share recorded since 1891, when the figure was also 32%. What has changed more recently is the composition of that migration: after peaking at a record 556,000 in the year to September 2023, net overseas migration has fallen for two consecutive years, and for the first time on record, India overtook England in 2025 as Australia’s single largest source of foreign-born residents.
How Much Is Immigration Contributing to Australia’s Population Growth?
Australia added 412,500 people in the year to December 2025, a 1.5% increase that pushed the national population to 27,801,023. Of that growth, ABS data attributes 301,000 to net overseas migration and 111,500 to natural increase, the excess of births over deaths, meaning migration accounted for roughly 73% of total growth over the period. This ratio has become the defining feature of Australian population growth in the 2020s, a direct consequence of a fertility rate that has fallen well below replacement level even as life expectancy continues rising, leaving natural increase a comparatively small contributor to overall growth.
Net overseas migration itself has moved through a dramatic post-pandemic cycle. After a net loss of 85,000 people in 2020-21, the lowest level since World War I, migration surged to a record annual net gain of 556,000 in the year to September 2023 as borders reopened and a backlog of students, workers, and family migrants arrived. Since that peak, net overseas migration has fallen for seven consecutive quarters, reaching 429,000 in 2023-24 and then 306,000 in the 2024-25 financial year, a 29% decline from the September 2023 peak, driven by both a 14% drop in migrant arrivals and a 13% rise in migrant departures.
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Australia’s Overseas Born Population
Australia’s stock of overseas-born residents, distinct from the annual flow measured by net overseas migration, reached 8.8 million people as of 30 June 2025, comprising 32.0% of the country’s total estimated population of 27.6 million at that date. This proportion has risen steadily from 24.2% in 2005, and has grown particularly quickly since 2022: it stood at 29.3% in 2021, rose to 29.5% in 2022, and crossed 30% for the first time since 1893 in 2023, before reaching 32.0% in 2025.
Over the two decades since 2005, Australia’s overseas-born population has grown at an average annual rate of 3.0%, three times the 1.0% average annual growth rate of the Australia-born population over the same period, according to ABS analysis. This divergence, sustained over such a long period, is the primary mechanical driver behind the rising overseas-born share of the total population.
Who Is Migrating to Australia?
India overtook England in 2025 to become Australia’s top overseas country of birth for the first time on record, with both populations estimated at approximately 971,000 people, though India recorded by far the larger increase, growing by 522,000 people since 2015 to become the largest group of foreign-born Australians. The Philippines rounded out the top five source countries with 412,530 migrants estimated in the country in 2025, a figure that has almost doubled since 2015, while Vietnam, South Africa, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia followed as other significant countries of origin.
The pattern is not simply one of growth everywhere. England and Italy recorded the largest declines in their Australian-resident populations since 2015, down by 36,000 and 46,000 people respectively, alongside declines for Greece and Germany, all four source countries whose populations in Australia had a median age of 60 or over in 2025, reflecting high levels of migration from these countries in the years following World War II. Italy dropped out of Australia’s top 10 countries of birth in 2024 for the first time since 1901, a symbolic marker of how substantially Australia’s migration profile has shifted over the postwar period.
Temporary visa holders dominated migrant arrivals in 2024-25, accounting for almost two in three of the 568,000 total arrivals, with international students the single largest category at 157,000 people. The median age of migrant arrivals in 2024-25 was 26 years, with 23 the single most common age, and 54% of 23-year-old arrivals being international students, underscoring how heavily Australia’s current migration intake skews toward young adults arriving for education and early-career work.
Where Australia’s Migrant Population Is Concentrated
Migration into Australia is not distributed evenly across the country. Western Australia recorded the highest proportion of overseas-born residents of any state or territory, at 34% in 2021, while Tasmania recorded the lowest, at just 16%.
Capital cities absorb a disproportionate share of new arrivals: Australia’s capitals grew by 324,700 people, or 1.8%, in the 2024-25 financial year, with net overseas migration the dominant contributor in fast-growing cities such as Perth, where migration added 37,300 people to Greater Perth’s population in 2024-25 alone, more than the combined contribution of natural increase and internal migration in that city.
Immigration and Australia’s Age Structure
Migration skews meaningfully younger than Australia’s resident population as a whole. Migrant arrivals in 2024-25 had a median age of just 26, compared with Australia’s overall median age of roughly 38.5. This age-selective pattern means migration adds disproportionately to the working-age population in the near term, even though the overseas-born population as a whole has an older median age than the Australia-born population, 45 years compared with 35 years as of 2022 data, a reflection of the large, aging cohort of postwar European migrants who arrived decades ago and have not been fully offset by the younger, more recent waves of migration from India, the Philippines, and other source countries.
Immigration and the Labor Force
Australia’s ABS has specifically noted the fiscal and labor market significance of this young migrant age profile, observing that arrivals concentrated in their early twenties, with more than half of 23-year-old arrivals being international students, have a positive long-term effect on the working-age population and fiscal position, since these migrants typically spend a substantial share of their working lives contributing to the Australian labor force and tax base before reaching retirement age.
International students in particular have become central to specific sectors of the Australian economy and to some universities’ funding models, and the sharp 14% decline in temporary visa arrivals during 2024-25, alongside a doubling in departures among working holiday visa-holders, has already been described by recruiters and industry groups as tightening the supply of available labor in sectors including hospitality, aged care, and agriculture that had come to rely on international student and backpacker labor during the post-pandemic migration boom.
Immigration and Population Growth Beyond Migration
Because migrants arriving in Australia skew young, a meaningful share of Australia’s future natural increase, the excess of births over deaths, will itself be indirectly attributable to migration, as migrants who arrive in their twenties go on to have children in Australia over subsequent years. This dynamic means the distinction between migration-driven growth and natural increase is not as clean over the longer term as the annual accounting suggests, even though the two are measured and reported separately by the ABS.
Australia’s Changing Migration Mix
Government policy has actively targeted a reduction in net overseas migration from its pandemic-recovery peak. Australian Treasury forecasts project net overseas migration falling further, to 245,000 in 2026-27, and stabilizing at approximately 225,000 from 2027-28 onward, a level that would remain above the pre-pandemic average of roughly 190,000 but well below the 538,000 to 556,000 peaks recorded in 2022-23 and the year to September 2023.
This moderation reflects a deliberate policy shift toward returning migration to what the government has described as a more sustainable long-term trajectory, following the exceptional intake associated with the post-pandemic recovery. Even at these reduced levels, migration is expected to remain the dominant driver of Australia’s population growth for the foreseeable future, given the persistent gap between the country’s below-replacement fertility rate and the population growth required to sustain its working-age population and economic growth.
Housing, Infrastructure and Regional Pressure
Rapid, migration-driven population growth in Australia’s major cities has coincided with a period of significant housing affordability pressure, a link that features prominently in Australia’s current public policy debate over immigration levels. It is worth noting that this relationship is genuinely contested among economists and policymakers, who point to a range of contributing factors beyond migration alone, including construction capacity constraints, land-use and zoning policy, interest rates, and existing housing stock, rather than attributing housing pressure to any single cause.
What is measurable is that population growth in cities such as Perth, Brisbane, and the broader South East Queensland corridor has been concentrated in the same period as substantial net overseas migration into those same regions, adding to the demand side of local housing and infrastructure markets even as the precise magnitude of migration’s specific contribution to price growth remains a matter of ongoing analysis and debate.
Australia’s Long Term Population Outlook
Long-range ABS-based projections suggest Australia’s population could approach 30 million by the early 2030s if current growth trends continue, even accounting for the government’s planned moderation of net overseas migration toward roughly 225,000 annually.
Given that Australia’s fertility rate of approximately 1.48 births per woman sits well below replacement level, with no policy intervention to date having reversed this trend in any developed economy over a sustained period, migration assumptions will remain the single largest variable determining Australia’s population trajectory over the coming decades, far outweighing the influence of any plausible change in the country’s birth rate.
Key Findings
- Net overseas migration added 301,000 people to Australia’s population in the year to December 2025, compared with 111,500 from natural increase, meaning roughly 73% of growth came from migration.
- Australia’s fertility rate of approximately 1.48 births per woman sits nearly 30% below the 2.1 replacement level, making migration the primary driver of population growth for the foreseeable future.
- The overseas-born population reached 8.8 million, or 32.0% of the total population, as of 30 June 2025, the highest share since 1891.
- India overtook England in 2025 to become Australia’s top country of birth for the first time on record, with both populations at approximately 971,000.
- Net overseas migration has fallen 29% from its September 2023 peak of 556,000 to 306,000 in the 2024-25 financial year, reflecting both fewer arrivals and rising departures.
- Migrant arrivals in 2024-25 had a median age of just 26, with international students the single largest arrival category at 157,000 people.
- Treasury forecasts project net overseas migration stabilizing at approximately 225,000 annually from 2027-28, still above pre-pandemic levels but well below the post-pandemic peak.
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Frequently Asked Questions
1. How much of Australia’s population growth comes from immigration?
Net overseas migration contributed 301,000 people to Australia’s population growth in the year to December 2025, compared with 111,500 from natural increase, meaning migration accounted for approximately 73% of total population growth over the period.
2. What percentage of Australians were born overseas?
As of 30 June 2025, 8.8 million people, or 32.0% of Australia’s population, were born overseas, the highest proportion recorded since 1891.
3. Which migrant groups are largest?
India and England were tied as Australia’s largest overseas-born groups in 2025 at approximately 971,000 people each, with India overtaking England for the first time on record, followed by China, New Zealand, and the Philippines at 412,530.
4. Does immigration make Australia’s population younger?
Migrant arrivals skew notably young, with a median age of 26 in 2024-25, adding disproportionately to the working-age population in the near term, though the broader overseas-born population as a whole has an older median age, 45 years, than the Australia-born population, at 35 years, reflecting large postwar migrant cohorts that have since aged.
5. Where do migrants settle in Australia?
Migrants settle disproportionately in Australia’s capital cities, with Western Australia recording the highest overseas-born population share of any state, at 34% in 2021, while Tasmania recorded the lowest, at 16%.
6. Is Australia’s net overseas migration rising or falling?
Falling. Net overseas migration peaked at 556,000 in the year to September 2023 and has since fallen for seven consecutive quarters, reaching 306,000 in the 2024-25 financial year, with Treasury forecasting further declines toward approximately 225,000 annually from 2027-28.
7. What is Australia’s fertility rate?
Australia’s total fertility rate is approximately 1.48 births per woman, roughly 30% below the 2.1 replacement level required to sustain the population through births alone without migration.
8. What kind of visas do most migrants arrive on?
Temporary visas accounted for almost two in three of the 568,000 migrant arrivals in 2024-25, with international students the largest single category at 157,000 people, followed by working holiday makers and other temporary skilled and visitor visa holders.
9. How has migration changed Australia’s top source countries over time?
England was historically Australia’s largest source of overseas-born residents, but India overtook it in 2025 for the first time on record, while Italy, Greece, and Germany, all major postwar migration sources, have seen declining populations in Australia as those aging cohorts pass away faster than they are replaced by new arrivals.
10. Will Australia’s population keep growing through immigration?
Yes, under current policy settings. Even as net overseas migration moderates from its post-pandemic peak toward a projected 225,000 annually, migration is expected to remain the dominant driver of Australia’s population growth given the country’s below-replacement fertility rate, with the population projected to approach 30 million by the early 2030s.
Sources
- Australian Bureau of Statistics, Population overview, June 2025
- Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australia’s population by country of birth, June 2025
- Australian Bureau of Statistics, Overseas Migration, 2024-25 financial year
- Australian Bureau of Statistics, National, State and Territory Population, December 2025
- Australian Bureau of Statistics, 8 things of interest about Australia’s overseas-born population
- Australian Treasury, migration and population forecasts, 2025-2026
