Have a Trade Skill and Land a Job Easily — Australia’s High-Hourly-Rate Shortage Occupation! Multiple Migration Pathways, Low Competition — We Recommend This Under-the-Radar but Excellent Field!

Demand for carpenters in Australia is very high. As this chart shows,the Department of Home Affairs offers a range of migration and visa categories for applicants to apply under,and once you’ve obtained your skills assessment, there are several different pathways to gaining permanent residency.

There have always been plenty of skilled migration places available for carpenters, yet hardly anyone applies — instead, everyone crowds into the more popular migration occupations chasing places.

What’s more, according to the latest data from job site Indeed,carpenters in NSW earn an average wage of around AUD $40.77 an hour.

While studying:

on an Australian student visa, you’re legally entitled to work 20 hours a week, which works out to —working part-time alone,an annual income of up to AUD $42,400. And that’s without even factoring in that students have no limit on working hours during the holidays — this is just based on the average hourly rate.

So over a single year, on a student visa alone, you could earn the equivalent of RMB 212,555.

If you have extensive experience or advanced skills, your hourly rate could be as high as AUD $72.72.That makes for an even more impressive income.

After graduating:

once you move from a student visa to a work visa,there’s no limit on your working hours. If you work full-time, based on35 hours a week, your annual income would come to AUD $74,201 — equivalent to RMB 371,977.

So the question is, what exactly do I need to do to move onto a work visa? How do I migrate? In Australia, every occupation has its own assessing authority, andthe assessing authority for carpenters is Trades Recognition Australia (TRA),which was set up specifically to assess whether what you’re currently studying or doing meets the requirements for this occupation.

Applicants must completeJob Ready Programfour steps within TRA’s processin order to obtain the outcome of the Full Skills Assessment.

Step 1: Provisional Skill Assessment

Firstly,the first requirementis that you musthold a relevant carpentry qualification, which you can obtain throughan Australian education provider.

The second requirementis that you must meet the requirement of360 hoursof work placement, or 360 hours of paid work, or a combination of both.

The last requirementis that you mustcomplete two years of full-time study in Australia, with at least 16 months of actual study time.Many students want to finish their studies and migrate in the shortest possible time, but this is a baseline requirement — there’s no shortcut around it.

You must meet all three of the above conditions to pass the first stage of the skills assessment. Once you’ve passed the first stage,you can apply for a18-month Graduate Work visa (Subclass 485), which is what we refer to as the work visa.

There’s another point worth noting:when applying for the work visa,you must hold a valid student visa,because some students think they can apply for another visa first and slowly prepare their documents afterwards — that approach won’t work.

If you have many years of carpentry work experience in China or overseas,

then even if you don’t meet the conditions above but still have that skill,it may still be possible to obtain a skills assessment on the strength of your years of professional experience,so please contact me directly for a specific assessment.

That said, by comparison,students already onshore in Australia are at more of an advantage — once they’ve got their Subclass 485 visa, they can work through the second, third and fourth stages of the TRA skills assessment step by step.