Posted April 19, 2017 18:53:30

Photo: Web developers are among the occupations affected by the 457 visa changes. (Unsplash.com: Luis Llerena, CC-0)

The Federal Government's changes to temporary migration visas would have affected less than 10 per cent of the visas granted in the second half of 2016, official data shows.

The list of occupations eligible for temporary visa status has been cut from 651 to 435 job types.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says the move is designed to put Australian workers first, though key industries have expressed fears about the difficulty they may face hiring top talent.

ABC News has crunched the numbers to see how many visas and which occupations are affected.

Removed occupations account for less than 10pc of visas

Data from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection shows that 24,270 primary 457 visas were granted between June and December 2016.

Of those, 2,083 were granted to workers in the 216 occupations that have now been removed from the visa list.

This represents 8.6 per cent of primary 457 visas.

That means nine out of 10 workers who were granted 457 visas in that timeframe would still be eligible for temporary work status under the new scheme.

Which occupations on the removed list were most commonly used?

Of the 216 occupations removed from the visa list, human resource advisers, production managers in manufacturing and web developers will be most affected, based on the number of 457 visas granted in 2015-16.

The chart below shows the top 10 removed occupations granted visas in 2015-16.

That's the last full year with data. For the second half of 2016, market research analysts, technicians and trades workers and sales reps for industrial products topped the list of removed occupations that had the most visas granted.

20 deleted occupations were not used in 10 years

For 20 of the occupations cut from the eligibility list, no visas were ever granted in the past 10 years.

That list includes turf growers, deer and goat farmers, boarding kennel operators, judges, magistrates and wool classers.

A further nine occupations removed from the list had seen less than five visas granted in the past 10 years. These were:

• Commissioned Fire Officer
• Electorate Officer
• Migration Agent
• Archaeologist
• Hydrographer
• Dental Prosthetist
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Worker
• Defence Force Member - Other Ranks
• Dog or Horse Racing Official

Search the full data for number of 457 visas granted to workers in removed occupations

Notes

• The official data recorded some occupations as having "less than five" visas granted. In those cases, the number of visas granted was assumed to be four to calculate these totals.
• The changes will not affect existing visa holders. Numbers of previously granted visas are used to indicate demand for temporary workers based on past years.

Topics: business-economics-and-finance, immigration, government-and-politics, turnbull-malcolm, australia