Pharmacy Technician (ANZSCO 311215)

On the Short-term Skilled Occupation List and Core Skills Occupation List

From the official Home Affairs skilled occupation lists, as at 2026-08-12. Lists change at each government update — always confirm on the official page before acting.

Which lists is Pharmacy Technician on?

STSOL — Short-term Skilled Occupation List. Occupations on the STSOL can access state-nominated and regional skilled visas (190/491), but not the Skilled Independent 189.

CSOL — Core Skills Occupation List. The employer-sponsorship list — occupations on the CSOL can be nominated for the Skills in Demand visa (subclass 482) and the Employer Nomination Scheme 186.

Visas this occupation can access

Being on a list makes the occupation nominatable for these visas — each visa still has its own requirements (points, age, English, a positive skills assessment, and for sponsored visas a willing employer or state).

Skills assessment

A positive skills assessment for Pharmacy Technician comes from:

What the assessment actually involves

VETASSESS assesses Pharmacy Technician as a Group D occupation running the full four-pathway structure: a Certificate IV in a highly relevant field plus one year of employment, a non-relevant Certificate IV plus two years, a highly relevant Certificate III plus three years, or a Certificate IV in any field plus four years. Group D employment can come before or after the qualification, unlike the Group E codes elsewhere in this cluster.

Where these applications come unstuck

VETASSESS's own exclusion list for this code is a title trap rather than a code trap: it rules out "Hospital Pharmacist" and "Retail Pharmacist" by name. Pharmacist is a registered health profession — one of the eight allied health professions Allied Health Professions Australia lists as currently AHPRA-registered — and VETASSESS's own page is explicit that a pharmacist is a separate occupation, not a senior version of this one.

An honest read on this pathway

Pharmacy Technician sits on the Short-term list plus the Core Skills Occupation List and reaches all six visas covered in this family, so the pathway is genuinely broad for anyone doing dispensary-support or pharmacy-technical work rather than pharmacist-level clinical work. The four-pathway qualification structure also gives more routes in than most other codes in this family, which mostly run a single fixed qualification-plus-employment combination.

VETASSESS assesses qualifications and employment separately. Both need documentation that agrees with itself. The Employment History Builder and Document Vault organise each trail before you lodge.

Talk it through with a registered agent

Whether nominating Pharmacy Technician is your best route depends on your points, experience evidence and timing — exactly what a MARA-registered agent works through in an initial consultation. Describe your situation once through Migratio and compare real consultation quotes from registered agents, free.

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All skilled occupations · Points calculator · Skilled visa agents