Moving Your Best Hire To Australia Is A Payroll Decision

Relocating an offshore employee to Australia is a payroll decision wearing a migration costume. The day the person lands you are paying an Australian salary and 12 per cent superannuation on top of it. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has now put a number on that salary. In Migrant Settlement Outcomes, released 22 September 2026, the median total income for skilled stream permanent migrants aged 15 to 64 in 2023-24 was $83,466.

Founders price the move. Almost nobody prices the payroll that follows it.

We have a stake in this, since Outstaffer employs people where they already live rather than moving them. Read the next number knowing that.

What the ABS published about migrants who settle in Australia

Not a policy announcement. A census-linked picture of what happens to permanent migrants after arrival, and two figures in it matter to anyone running a team across borders.

Income first. Across all streams the median total income for permanent migrants aged 15 to 64 in 2023-24 was $70,762. For the skilled stream it was $83,466, against $58,926 for family and $43,910 for humanitarian.

Then employment. In 2021, 81.8 per cent of skilled stream migrants were employed, against 68.2 per cent in the family stream and 46.0 per cent in the humanitarian stream.

Read together, the skilled stream is what you would hope for. People who work, earning close to the national average. That is the problem with the plan. You are not importing a bargain.

The arithmetic of relocating an offshore employee to Australia

Use the ABS skilled stream median as your anchor, because that is what this cohort earns onshore. $83,466.

Superannuation on that, at the 12.00 per cent guarantee rate the ATO publishes for 2026-27, is $10,015.92 a year. Before a dollar of application charge, relocation allowance, desk, laptop or payroll tax, and before the months it takes.

Now the alternative. Outstaffer's published Employer of Record price is $250 per employee per month. Three thousand dollars a year, on top of whatever that person is paid where they live.

The superannuation alone on one relocated hire is more than three times the annual cost of employing the same person where they already are. Not the salary gap. Just the super.

What does the extra money actually buy?

Presence. A body in your office, in your time zone, able to sit in front of a client or hold something that requires Australian residency. Some roles need that.

It does not buy capability. Nobody gets better at their job on the flight.

The honest case for relocating the person

Here is the strongest version of the argument against me, and it is stronger than most people running offshore teams will concede.

Skilled migrants do well here. An 81.8 per cent employment rate is not a struggling cohort, and the ABS also found 71 per cent of permanent migrants held a non-school qualification. Bringing someone to Australia is not a risk you are managing. It is a life you are offering, and that buys a loyalty no monthly service fee does.

A person whose residency runs through your business does not resign lightly, either.

Both true. Neither moves the arithmetic.

Related reading

• What the June quarter actually cost you per employee
• Moving from an EOR to your own entity, and what you sign up for

When the move is a decision, and when it is a reflex

Relocate when the role has to be in Australia. Do not relocate to close a capability gap that has nothing to do with geography.

Should you relocate an offshore employee at all?

Only if the work itself requires an Australian chair. If the real reason is that you never built the systems to manage the person where they are, moving them is an expensive way to dodge a management problem. The sponsored road narrowed this year, so the planning window is longer than it was, and your payroll tax bill does not move when the desk does, which catches employers both ways.

This touches tax and migration law. Get advice on your own circumstances first.

If you want to see what relocating an offshore employee to Australia costs against the alternative, run one role through the platform and put the two numbers side by side. Most people never have.

So which is it: does the work need to happen in Australia, or do you just want the person closer to you?