Australia to boost skilled migrant numbers
Updated
Australia is to boost its skilled migrant intake by 30 per cent over the next year, in a bid to overcome a shortage of skilled workers.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Peter McDonald is the Director of the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute
MCDONALD: Well you can look it up on the immigration website for anybody who wanted to do that, there's a section called Migration Occupations in Demand list. But the main shortages are in the trades, particularly in building and construction and in the mining industry. But shortages are quite widespread across the Australian economy as well, but certainly in the trades area and particularly in building and construction.
LAM: And when you mentioned the mining sector for instance is it skilled engineers or is it miners who actually go underground? I mean who are the people that we need?
MCDONALD: Both, there's a very heavy demand for engineers and engineers are among the kind of professional skills, engineers are right up there at the top on the demand list. But also workers who are, mining these days of course is not a matter of people down holes with picks and shovels in Australia, so everybody is relatively skilled. The mining is done in a highly mechanised way and so there's truck drivers, there's people who are working mining machinery are what's required.
LAM: So Peter how did Australia get into this situation where the skilled shortages are now so dramatic?
MCDONALD: Well there's two causes; one is the underlying demography, you know birth rates have been lower, the baby boom generation is passing out of the labour force, this is the post-war baby boom generation. So could have expected that and indeed without migration Australia's labour force would begin to fall in number about now. So there's that demographic push, but at the same time it's come together with a huge increase in demand for Australia's products, particularly in the mining area.
LAM: There's also a huge increase in housing, there's a shortage of housing in Australia. Where will all these skilled migrants live?
MCDONALD: Well I think that's a very good question and that's a point that we've made to the government that up till now planning has tended to be rather short-term. One year we increase the migration intake by 31-thousand migrants. But we need to be looking at the longer term and what kind of infrastructure requirements are associated with new migrants. New migrants also generate demand for additional labour as well, they shop and they require all kinds of services, so there's a kind of multiplier effect upon the labour force. So as migration goes up there is a further demand for labour but there's also demand for housing. It's fairly clear that high levels of immigration in recent times have been a central part of the housing problem in Australia.
LAM: And how do skilled migrants fare once they get here to Australia? A recent study suggested that many skilled migrants can't find work in their relevant professions?
MCDONALD: Yes well just in terms of employment skilled migrants do very well, 90 per cent are employed quite rapidly. There's also now needs to be understood that a lot of permanent skilled migration in Australia comes from people who are already temporary residents in Australia, either they're foreign students or they are people who are on temporary work visas, the so-called 457 visa. And so a lot of those people are already quite well established in Australia and know in the case of the 457 visa holders they already have jobs. So the story's not quite as bad as that at all I don't think. And if you take non-migrants in Australia and their qualifications you'll also find very large numbers of people who are not working in the area of their qualification, people change their mind about what they want to do. But sometimes it does take, potentially it can take skilled migrants up to five years to really get the kind of job they want.
