If you’ve submitted an Expression of Interest and you’re refreshing SkillSelect every week hoping something changes, you’re not alone — and you’re not imagining it. Some occupations are clearing invitations almost as fast as people apply. Others have queues in the tens of thousands with barely a handful of invitations to show for it.
We went through the Department of Home Affairs’ latest SkillSelect dashboard — the “EOI by Visa Type and Status” report, dated June 2026 — across 25 occupations spanning teaching, ICT, trades, nursing, social work, accounting and marketing. Here’s what it actually shows, occupation by occupation, and what it means if you’re the one waiting on an invitation.
First, A 60-second Refresher On How Your Eoi Actually Moves
Every status on the dashboard is a real checkpoint, not just admin noise:
- Submitted — your EOI is live and ranked by points, sitting in the pool waiting to be picked.
- Invited — the department has issued you an invitation to apply for the visa.
- Lodged — you accepted that invitation and lodged your actual visa application.
- Hold — paused, usually while waiting on a state or territory nomination decision.
- Closed — expired, withdrawn, or timed out after two years without an invitation.
The number that matters most if you’re still waiting is the ratio between Submitted and Invited. Think of it as “how many people are ahead of me in this queue, and how many of them actually got through this round.” That ratio is the backbone of everything below.
One quick caveat: the Department suppresses any count under 20 for privacy reasons, showing it simply as “<20.” Where that happens, our ratios use 20 as a conservative floor — the real number of invitations, and therefore the real backlog, is very likely even more extreme than what’s written.
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The Trades Are Having A Moment
If there’s one clear winner in this data, it’s construction trades. Carpenter and Wall and Floor Tiler both show invitation numbers that match or exceed the number of EOIs submitted under the 189 Points-Tested stream. Carpenter, for instance, had 571 EOIs submitted and 594 invitations issued in the same window — meaning the department isn’t just keeping pace with new applications, it’s actively working through the existing backlog too.
Carpenter and Joiner (a distinct ANZSCO code from plain “Carpenter” — worth double-checking which one your skills assessment actually lands you in) shows the same pattern at a smaller scale. Glazier and Solid Plasterer are low-volume, niche codes where the numbers are simply too small to build a meaningful ratio, but nothing in the data suggests a backlog building there either.
If you hold a trade qualification in this space, this is about as good as SkillSelect gets right now.
Nursing And Social Work: Quietly One Of The Best Pathways Going
Social Worker posts one of the strongest ratios in the entire dataset outside the trades — roughly 4 applicants for every invitation under 189 Points-Tested. Registered Nurse (Aged Care) isn’t far behind, at around 6 to 1 on the same stream.
Both occupations show genuine invitation activity across all three streams we reviewed (189, 190, and 491 State/Territory Nominated), which is more than can be said for most of the corporate and ICT occupations further down this list. The other nursing specialisations — Nurse Practitioner, Registered Nurse (Child and Family Health), and Registered Nurse (Community Health) — are simply much smaller, niche codes, so the numbers there are too thin to draw a strong conclusion either way.
If your assessment sits in aged care nursing or social work, the data backs up what many migration agents have been saying anecdotally: this is a comparatively fast lane.
Teaching: Same Profession, Three Very Different Queues
This is where it gets interesting, because “teacher” is not one market. Secondary School Teacher, Primary School Teacher, and Early Childhood (Pre-Primary School) Teacher each sit under wildly different levels of demand.
Secondary School Teacher is the standout: about 6 applicants per invitation under 189 Points-Tested. Compare that to Early Childhood Teacher, where the same stream is running north of 500 applicants for every invitation, off a submitted pool of over 12,000 EOIs. Primary School Teacher sits somewhere in between, though invitation activity there was minimal this round across the streams we could see.
If you’re assessed under more than one teaching code, it’s genuinely worth checking which one clears faster before you commit — the difference isn’t marginal, it’s the difference between years and months.
Ict: The Biggest Queue With The Least Movement
Here’s the number that should stop any ICT professional in their tracks: ICT Business Analyst had over 12,800 EOIs submitted under the 190 State Sponsored stream alone, and invitations for that same stream were suppressed under the Department’s 20-EOI privacy threshold. Combined across all three streams we reviewed, the submitted pool for this one occupation exceeds 33,000.
It’s not an isolated case. ICT Project Manager, ICT Support Engineer, ICT Systems Test Engineer, ICT Support and Test Engineers (nec), ICT Managers (nec), ICT Business Development Manager, and ICT Customer Support Officer all show the same shape: thousands of EOIs stacked up, invitations effectively frozen this round.
This is arguably the single most important finding in the whole dataset — not because ICT skills aren’t valued, but because so many people hold ICT occupation codes that the queue has become genuinely enormous relative to the number of invitations issued each round.
If your code falls anywhere in this family, a state nomination pathway with a real, demonstrable connection to that state is worth exploring properly — general skilled migration alone is moving very slowly here.
Accounting And Marketing: The Other Frozen Queue
If ICT is the biggest queue in tech, Accountant (General) is the biggest queue in the whole dataset, full stop. Across the three streams we reviewed, submitted EOIs for this single occupation code add up to more than 30,000, with invitations still capped under 30 per stream. Management Accountant shows an almost identical pattern one tier down.
Sales and Marketing Manager and Marketing Specialist aren’t quite at the same scale, but they show the same weak invitation activity — thousands of EOIs submitted, invitations under 20 in most streams this round.
Accounting’s oversubscription has been an open secret in migration circles for years, and this month’s data confirms it in black and white. If accounting is your code, a strong points score isn’t optional — it’s the whole game.
So What Does This Actually Mean For You?
A few practical takeaways, whichever occupation you’re sitting in:
- Your ANZSCO code matters more than your job title. Two people who both call themselves “teachers” or “accountants” can be looking at completely different wait times depending on the exact code their skills assessment lands them in.
- A ratio isn’t a guarantee — but a low one is a genuine green light. Trades, aged care nursing, and social work are showing real invitation activity right now. If you’re in one of those spaces, this is a good window to be pushing your application forward.
- A high ratio doesn’t mean “give up,” it means “get strategic.” State and territory nomination, boosting your points score, or checking whether a closely related occupation code applies to you can all change the picture — especially in ICT and accounting, where the general queue is genuinely backed up.
- “Under 20” invitations doesn’t mean zero — but assume the worst case. Because the Department suppresses small counts, the real number could be anywhere from 1 to 19. Treat any ratio built on that figure as a floor, not a ceiling.
Not Sure Where You Actually Stand?
Points thresholds, occupation ceilings and state nomination criteria shift with almost every round, and the gap between “on paper” and “in practice” is exactly where good migration advice earns its keep. If you’d like us to map your specific occupation code, points score, and visa options against the latest SkillSelect data, book a free 15-minute consultation with our team and we’ll walk you through exactly where you stand.
Data source: Department of Home Affairs SkillSelect dashboard, “EOI by Visa Type and Status,” as at June 2026. This article is general information only and does not constitute migration advice.
