What Employers Need to Know Before Nominating a Worker for Sponsorship

Before you lodge

The stream

The subclass 482 operates through Core Skills, Specialist Skills and Labour Agreement, with a single Core Skills Occupation List replacing the previous two list system. The stream sets the salary test, the evidence and, in practice, the speed.

Salary

From 1 July 2026 the Core Skills Income Threshold is $79,499 and the Specialist Skills Income Threshold is $146,717. Both index annually against Average Weekly Ordinary Time Earnings. The salary has to meet the applicable threshold or the Annual Market Salary Rate for the role, whichever is higher. Meeting the threshold alone is not enough where the market rate sits above it.

Labour market testing

Testing is required in most cases and it is prescriptive: set content, set platforms, a minimum duration, and a validity period that expires. Advertising that was fine three months ago may no longer support a nomination today. Non-compliant or expired advertising is one of the most common reasons a nomination is refused.

Timing

It depends on the stream and on whether the business is already an approved sponsor. Specialist Skills nominations are reported in days to weeks. Core Skills programs from first sponsorship to visa grant commonly run to several months. Being an approved sponsor already removes a large part of that.

Sponsorship is three approvals, not one: the business as a sponsor, the position as a nomination, and the worker as a visa applicant.

They can be lodged together, but they are assessed separately, and a problem at any one of them stops the other two.Most of the problems arrive at the nomination, and most of those come down to two things the employer controls entirely: how the role was advertised, and what it pays.

What you take on after the grant

Sponsorship obligations continue for the life of the sponsorship: record keeping in a prescribed form, notifying prescribed events within set periods, ensuring equivalent terms of employment, maintaining the market salary rate over time, and cooperating with monitoring. Breaches attract sanctions including barring and civil penalties.

Monitoring may include a site inspection and requests for records. Record keeping is the most common area where problems are found, and it is also the most preventable.

Plan the permanent stage early

Sponsored workers can move to permanent residence through employer nomination under subclass 186, in the Direct Entry or Temporary Residence Transition streams, and through regional pathways under subclass 494. That pathway should be planned at the first temporary nomination rather than three years later, when the occupation list or the worker's circumstances may have moved.

If a nomination is refused

Nomination and sponsorship refusals generally carry review rights to the Administrative Review Tribunal, on deadlines that cannot be extended.