Australian Economy

Australia running a “de-facto low-skilled immigration policy”

Leith van Onselen
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By Leith van Onselen

Last month, Dr Bob Birrell from the Australian Population Research Institute (APRI) released a damning report showing that Australia’s so-called skilled visa system is a giant fraud, whereby:

  • many recently arrived skilled migrants (i.e. arrived between 2011 and 2016) cannot find professional jobs;
  • many skilled migrants have gone into areas that the government’s own Department of Employment has judged to be oversupplied (e.g. accounting and engineering); and
  • migrants have generally worse labour market outcomes than the Australian born population.

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.