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For decades, net permanent and long-term (NPLT) arrivals data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) provided a strong, reliable leading indicator of the direction of net overseas migration (NOM).
When the rate of NPLT arrivals rose or fell, it reliably suggested that NOM was moving in the same direction.
The strong correlation between NPLT arrivals and NOM was presumably why the Centre for Population deemed it an “early indicator of future migration flows” in its official handbook, Fundamentals of migration in Australia: Migration concepts and measurements:
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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.
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