Economists mislead again on immigration’s unemployment impact

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A group of economists have joined forces to argue against the notion that rebooting ‘Big Australia’ mass immigration would drive up Australia’s unemployment rate and temper wage growth:

“Migration has certainly played a role in the low unemployment rate so we have a lot fewer workers coming into Australia,” [Professor Robert Breunig, director of the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute at ANU’s Crawford School of Public Policy] told SBS News.

“Hundreds of thousands less, so the numbers are pretty big, so that has created important labour shortages in different parts of the economy”…

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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.