Here’s the complete analysis of this 189 round — please take a look 🤝

A dedicated post with the full summary and analysis

Getting straight to the point — this round clearly issued more invitations than the previous one. Nursing, the big winner, continued to receive a large volume of invitations, and there were also quite a few occupations that hadn’t seen any invitations in about a year finally getting some this time around. The previous round issued close to 7k invitations; this round should sit somewhere between 7k and 10k at minimum. As for the occupations and scores, see the header image.

The winners first

No question — nursing continues to stand head and shoulders above the rest. Last round the cut-off was 80 points; this round not only cleared the 80-point backlog but also issued a substantial number of invitations at 75 points — on our side we’ve seen 75-point invitations granted to applicants updated as recently as this year’s 18 March.

Bear in mind that as of the end-of-October data (Image 2), nursing had nearly 1.5k applicants sitting at 80 points or above and close to 3.2k at 75 points. For nursing alone, at least 2-3k invitations were issued — already more than the entire previous round.

The traditional “three treasures” — secondary teaching, social work, and their long-time companion early childhood teaching — were finally decoupled this round. Secondary teaching and social work both fully cleared their 80-point-and-above backlog (close to 400 applicants combined), and a healthy number of 75-point invitations went out as well. Secondary teaching is projected to have received at least 400-500 invitations, and social work at least 400+ (Image 3).

Allied-health occupations such as OT, PT, and GP were mostly invited in the 80-85 point range — clearly among the professions consistently favoured by the Department.

Construction trades continued to sit at 65-70 points, essentially receiving invitations as soon as they met the pool-entry threshold.

There were also quite a few occupations that hadn’t seen any invitations in about a year finally getting some this round — for example management consultants, statisticians, and lawyers, sitting around 85-90 points.

Some construction-related occupations such as Archi, CPM, civil draftspersons, and civil engineering technicians also received invitations (around 85-90 points). Some engineering occupations — chemical, mining, and materials, among others — also had invitations issued, but largely at 90+.

The losers

Early childhood teaching remains clearly under sustained pressure. Applicant numbers keep climbing while invitation volumes haven’t grown in step. The direct result: on top of the invitation cut-off staying at 85 points, this round’s queue progression was visibly slower than last round’s, advancing only to the end of August 2025. As of end-August, there were still 215 applicants sitting at 85 points without an invitation (Image 4) — meaning early childhood teaching received only around 200 invitations this round. Compared with nursing that’s barely a rounding error, and it’s fewer than secondary teaching or social work received. With more and more early childhood teaching graduates entering the pool, if the Department doesn’t lift invitation numbers, even 85 points isn’t a safe bet for the 189 pathway anymore.

Beyond the under-invited early childhood teaching cohort, the worst-hit are the occupations that have seen virtually no invitations for more than a year, including civil engineering, QS, and other construction-related occupations overlooked for two rounds running, along with many engineering professions such as mechanical engineering. Then there are occupations the 189 program seems to have all but forgotten — IT (we’ve only seen high-scoring multimedia specialists getting invited), accounting, auditing, and the like.

On the usual quarterly cadence, the next round of invitations should land around February next year. For those who didn’t get the nod this round, fingers crossed the next one brings good news.

One last reminder: if you’ve already landed your invitation, please take a moment to withdraw any other 189/190/491 EOIs you still have open — it’s a small gesture that gives other applicants a little more hope.

You’re warmly invited to join us at 2pm in the live room, where I’ll be chatting with Xingyao K-shen Migration Agency.