As migrants flood Sydney, locals are forced out

By Leith van Onselen

The latest population figures for NSW showed that the state received a whopping 98,570 net overseas migrants in the year to June 2017, but lost nearly 15,000 residents interstate:

According to analysis late last year by economist Callam Pickering, many of the workers leaving Sydney are high skilled, meaning the city is experiencing a ‘drain brain’:

Economist at jobs site Indeed, Callam Pickering, recently conducted an analysis of job seeker behaviour and found around nine per cent of clicks by STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) job seekers in New South Wales were for jobs posted in other states.

“By comparison, only six per cent of clicks for New South Wales STEM job postings were coming from job seekers living in other states,” Mr Pickering said.

“With the exception of South Australia, STEM job seekers in NSW are the most likely group to search for work interstate”…

“It’s not that tech workers can’t find jobs in Sydney, there is an abundance, it’s that they’re more than happy to move interstate if the right job is available,” he said.

“Many highly skilled workers would rather live someplace else”…

The Director of Advocacy at the Committee for Sydney, James Hulme, agreed that a looming Sydney brain drain was a concern.

He listed problems with housing affordability, transport infrastructure and Sydney’s night scene (compared to Melbourne’s) as the main issues…

Yesterday, Fairfax’s Matt Wade reported that essential workers were similarly fleeing Sydney’s inner and middle suburbs, driven-out by the high cost-of-living (namely housing):

New research has revealed a dramatic slump in the number of key workers living in long-established Sydney regions during the past decade while areas on the urban fringe have experienced significant net gains.

The Parramatta region had the biggest net loss of essential workers between 2006 and 2016 with a decline of 21.4 per cent. Next was the eastern suburbs (-15.2 per cent) followed by Sydney’s inner south west (-14.6 per cent), Ryde (-14.2 per cent) and inner west (-11.3 per cent).

During the same period the Southern Highlands, on the extremity of Greater Sydney, experienced a 17 per cent net increase in the number of essential workers living in the region. There were also big net gains in the Hunter Valley (+13.6 per cent) and the Illawarra (+10.5 per cent).

“In Sydney there is a growing spatial mismatch between where key workers live and work,” said the study conducted by the University of Sydney’s Urban Housing Lab for the Teachers Mutual Bank, Firefighters Mutual Bank and Police Bank.

“Although key worker jobs are situated throughout the metropolitan region, and particularly in inner Sydney, the majority of the metropolitan region’s key workers reside in outer ring suburbs”…

The report blamed high house prices and rents for “pushing out” Sydney’s essential workers. It warned housing affordability for key worker groups is “likely to decline further without effective market innovation or policy change”.

It found key workers typically needed 13 years to save a 20 per cent deposit for a median-priced home in inner Sydney in 2016, compared to 8.4 years in 2006.

Fake left mass immigration advocates call it ‘cultural enrichment’. Everyone else sees it for what it is: housing unaffordability, wage stagnantion, congestion, pollution, and overall deteriorating living standards.

One only needs to look at the housing market to see why young locals are being forced-out of Sydney.

The cost of a dwelling in Sydney has rocketed to insane levels:

Driving the home ownership rate for those aged under-40 through the floor:

With the proportion of households thrown onto the rental market growing massively:

And more than half of lower income households in ‘rental stress’:

So basically, incumbent young Sydneysiders are being forced to move from where they grew up just so they can make way for the torrent of overseas migrants hitting the city every year via the federal government’s mass immigration program. And this torrent is expected to continue indefinitely, with the NSW Government projecting that 76,000 net overseas migrants will flood Sydney annually over the next 20 years:

If the fake left were genuine about addressing housing affordability for young Australians, as well as safeguarding the living standards of the working class, they would abandon their open borders rhetoric and argue to slash Australia’s ‘Big Australia’ immigration program to sensible and sustainable levels.

Doing so would improve income/wealth inequality and home ownership as there would be less upward pressure on house prices, as well as less economic rents flowing to the owners of capital (who benefit the most from mass immigration while ordinary residents bear the costs).

Wages growth would also improve, other things equal, as there would be less competition for jobs and workers’ bargaining power is increased, which would also help to reduce inequality.

There would also be less youth unemployment, as employers are incentivised to hire and train young workers and graduates rather than taking the easy route of importing a migrant.

Lower population growth would also lift productivity and income by decongesting cities and, over the long run, would share Australia’s fixed national endowment of resources among fewer people, also ensuring higher income per capita.

In short, reducing immigration back towards the historical average is a no-brainer for anybody concerned about inequality.

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