Federal budget upgrades net migration by 55,000

Leith van Onselen

Wednesday 13 May 2026

Recent federal budgets have notoriously underestimated net overseas migration (NOM), as illustrated below:

Tuesday night’s federal budget is no exception, significantly upgrading NOM forecasts from last year’s budget.

As illustrated below, the NOM forecast has been upgraded by 35,000 (13%) for 2025-23 and by 20,000 (9%) in 2026-24:

The full text of this article is available to MacroBusiness subscribers

$1 for your first month, then:

$24.99 / month

$249 / year

Cancel at any time through our billing provider, Stripe

About the author

Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.