You couldn’t get a better example of how addicted to bad policy and old ideas Australian business is than yesterday’s effort from major employer group the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
It wants skilled migration to be doubled to 200,000 a year to address “skill shortages”. It was immaculate timing, given that Reserve Bank released the minutes of its October board meeting yesterday morning. The Bank noted:
Even in industries that had experienced strong labour demand, wages growth remained subdued. In reviewing wages growth across different types of wage-setting arrangements, members noted that a small share of people on individual agreements had received larger wage increases over recent quarters, in part reflecting earlier wage cuts that had been reversed. Overall, there were few indications from disaggregated wages data or from the bank’s liaison program to suggest that aggregate wages growth was likely to accelerate sharply in the period ahead.
That is, Australian workers have struggled to get a decent pay rise despite strong demand for labour in a number of industries. But employers want to flood the market with another million workers over the next five years.
As the Reserve Bank has pointed out before, using foreign labour, especially temporary labour, has helped suppress wage rises for Australians. And Australian business has a “laser-like focus on cost control in Australian business over the past decade” that has made it reluctant to pay wage rises.
That is, Australian business is addicted to suppressing wages and using foreign labour to that effect. And nothing has changed throughout the pandemic, except the hunger for business to reopen borders so they can flood the labour market.
The new Perrottet government in New South Wales is also keen to reopen the floodgates to foreign labour, with the premier flagging his goal of a “big NSW” despite Sydney having insufficient infrastructure and housing supply to keep up with population growth over the past 20 years.
If adopted, a surge in migrant labour — especially temporary migrant labour from foreign students and an expanded category of temporary work visas, including new agriculture visas and expanded definitions of working holidaymakers — will guarantee that Australian wages growth will not even return to its stagnation of years since 2013, but remain stuck below 2% and below inflation.
With wages growth well below the levels the Reserve Bank wants to see to permanently push inflation up, that will mean the persistence of record low interest rates.
Greater demand for housing from higher migration, persistent low interest rates — these are a guarantee of even higher property price growth in major cities and, increasingly, regions.
We’ve seen before where this neoliberal agenda leads: resentment at lack of income growth, decline in electoral support for any difficult economic reform, anger at immigrants and rising populism — along with the economic and social consequences of greater congestion and housing unaffordability.
The endless invocation of “skills shortages” by employers should point, not to a need to let 200,000 more workers in, but a need for greater business investment in skills and training. At the moment, business relies heavily on governments training their workers for them — either our government or governments in countries they can draw migrants from.
And it should also point to — as any economist would note — the need for employers to pay a higher price for labour. A shortage, after all, is the price mechanism at work, with consumers of labour not willing to pay enough to bring more supply into the market.
The politics of high immigration, however, are different to a decade ago, when Julia Gillard drew fire for seeking to curb 457 visas (a policy later adopted by the Coalition, which heavily criticised her at the time).
There are right-wing political groupings, led by One Nation, dead keen to leap on any suggestion of allowing more migrants in, and keen, too, to explicitly link them to lower wages, even if the overall benefits of permanent migration are modestly beneficial. Labor has been focused on temporary migration for a couple of years. And with Philip Lowe’s comments, they have the imprimatur of a key economic authority.
But business, and many economic bureaucrats, remain glued to old ideas of open borders and easy flows of labour to wherever it can reduce wages to a minimum.
This alleged “lack of skilled workers” is always delightfully vague. Is a taxi driver with a Masters of Accounting a skilled worker?
There is definitely a ‘lack of skilled ‘workers” in the House of Reps and the Senate!
There surely is.
I haven’t researched it closely, but my understanding is that you have come here on a skilled visa and then work an unskilled job then you’re still counted as a skilled migrant. This is how they hide how many unskilled workers are in the country.
https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/working-in-australia/skill-occupation-list
I am aware of the skilled occupation list. What happens though is someone is given a skilled visa but does not find skilled work. My understanding is they are counted based on the visa they hold, so Mandeep might be listed as a skilled worker but Mandeep is actually a cleaner.
Check the T&C for each type of Visa. There is no “one size fits all”
What happens with a visa for something like a skilled accountant? This is a common rort in Indian communities. Anyone who knows this migrant community knows a ‘skilled accountant’ who is an Uber driver. How is that counted for the stats that are trumpeted to the public?
Again, what type of Visa are they here on? If you are on an Employer Sponsored Visa and lose your job you need to find another Employer Sponsor for your approved Skill within a certain timeframe. You may be invited to apply for an Independent Skilled Visa but you have to meet the criteria for that (not easy). Each type of Visa has its own T&C’s which have to be complied. There is no “one size fits all”.
Usually they have 60 days to either find a new sponsor, be granted a different visa, or leave the country.
I don’t normally ask people what visa they are on.
I know many migrants in unskilled jobs how somehow live here long term and have ‘skills’ of some kind. Taxi drivers with Master’s, cleaners who are engineers, accountants who are waiters. How are they counted?
There are also a lot of articles about how skilled migrants can’t find skilled work and end up in unskilled. How are they counted?
I just want an accurate counting of how many migrants (say within a 15 year arrival frame) are in unskilled work and what the business case is for that?
I am open minded. If there’s a case for it then awesome. I just find it suspicious that Government seems to be hiding the numbers on how many low paid migrants we have here. We’re told migrants will contribute to tax, but from what I see a large number of migrants pay little tax so what’s the go.
You are naively assuming people follow the rules. I’m out of that world as a few years but fraud was super common. I’ve seen the migration paperwork myself and watched meetings where they ran the fraud. But I’m not tattle, I never reported it. I’ve also seen the fake marriages and the fake students and everyone else.
I’m not against migration of an appropriate sized. I just point out that fraud is rampant. Anyone who went to uni in the last 15 years can tell you that they sat in classes with people who can’t speak English despite the course requiring a high level of proficiency and evidence of it. Magically, they still are in class.
I have no doubt it occurs but, like most things that become urban legend, the scale (or lack of same) is unknown. Hate the Game, not the Player.
I don’t hate migrants. I understand if you have the opportunity to have a better life anyone would take it, even if it meant breaking the law or a moral code.
My point is that we don’t really know how many unskilled migrant workers there are, unless you have seen that data. I can’t find it. It’s really important because we are told migrants are our future tax base. Well, I know how many a low income worker pays in tax – very little.
if we are being sold the idea of a tax base to fund our ageing population lets see the evidence.
It was then asked how skilled workers are working unskilled. You tell me, other than the fraud I’ ve seen. Everyone prior to Uber knew a full time taxi driver with a degree. It’s not a stretch to argue our unskilled migrant workforce is large-ish.
I’m not against it! If we need it, we need it. I am just suss of this story of an amazing tax base.
Camille you are all over the shop as others have said. You are obsessed with Tax and Migrants.
“I don’t normally ask people what visa they are on”
Then how can you possibly state that they are a “Skilled Migrant” working in an “Unskilled” job? Simply having a Degree doesn’t mean that you meet the definition of “Skilled”. Do you have a Degree and if so, do you work in a role that you are qualified for? I have 3 and I can tell you that there was only ever 1 type of role that I was qualified for (in multiple companies) in my employment history.
They may have come here under a Partner Visa, a Family Reunion or a Refugee Visa for all you know (as you have said you don’t normally ask people what Visa they are on) and need to take whatever work is available be it in their chosen field or in an unskilled position. You see only a frozen moment in time.
Plenty of Degree qualified people working Entry Level at the Public Service from what I have encountered.
“You are naively assuming people follow the rules”
You are naively assuming that I have had little to no experience with Sponsored Skilled Employment and other Immigration. I can. tell you that, in my experience, Immigration check every detail and ensure that they are complying with the terms of their Skilled Employment Visa.
As to Partner Visa’s, yes these are gamed all over the world however I can assure you, based on personal experience, Immigration know when an application is dodgy.
“You can go to some suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne and everyone is from abroad and doesn’t seem to have much money.”
Those are usually called Working Class Multicultural Areas and they have existed since before you or I were born. The makeup of these areas changes over time.
“Anyone who went to uni in the last 15 years can tell you that they sat in classes with people who can’t speak English despite the course requiring a high level of proficiency and evidence of it. Magically, they still are in class”
If that is so then your argument is with the Universities not the Student. Most Universities have the following (or similar) requirement:
English language requirementsHow to demonstrate your proficiency in English
Your first language is not English
If English is not your first language, you will need to provide proof of your English proficiency before you can commence your studies at the University.
You can do this by demonstrating that you have completed specific secondary or tertiary qualifications, by taking an English language skills test, or by completing a relevant English language course at the University’s Centre for English Teaching.
English language skills tests we accept:
As to your other points:
There are articles every few months saying that skilled migrants, on skilled visas, cannot find skilled work. Yet we kept bringing them in.
As for working class migrants we have never had such massive numbers. No one, not even you, is yet to explain what the goal is of a massive poor foreign intake is.
There will always be a working class and a migrant working class. Does it need to be so huge? I’m not against some unskilled migration. I query the numbers. Are you really defending the numbers?
Please tell me what your argument is for a massive unskilled foreign workforce in an age when automation is coming super fast and will soon put many of these people out of a job? In my unskilled industry the future arrived during the pandemic and we’re already using technology in labor cutting ways that are a huge leap forward.
Please tell me what the point is of a large unskilled workforce who supposedly support aged people but will themselves be aged and poor and need support. Ponzi scheme springs to mind.
There is nothing wrong with working class or migrants. At certain levels. I’m working class. I just question what the point is of a huge amount of us eking out a living and fighting for scraps.
As for facts, I’m facts! I am low income. I know how much tax I pay, how much I spend and how much I qualify for in Government services. I know how much I can save by retirement. I work in a job I like but the nation could live without. I question my own addition to the country to be honest!
I couldn’t help but be born here. You’re stuck with me. I just wonder why you’d import more of me in great numbers. We are more than our economic contribution, but I do wonder why you’d bring more of me in huge numbers. Small numbers sure, huge numbers nope.
Why would you want to grow the working class? Shouldn’t we be trying to shrink it? Less competition would help more people rise up.
I just want someone ANYONE to make the case as to why we need low income migration in large numbers. You can go to some suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne and everyone is from abroad and doesn’t seem to have much money. What was the goal here?
Now, there are labor shortages at the bottom end so we need some migration that is unskilled. But as much as we had? What’s the business case?
I just want to know what the point of a pizza delivery guy is from overseas being here in high numbers. If there is a case for it then awesome, welcome. But what is the case for it? As far as I can tell these migrants make money for the housing industry, the education industry and provide cheap labor. And the costs of what a low income citizen qualifies for are huge.
If we need low income migration then cool but it does seem like a scam run by the elites to make money.
I have seen companys that run large catering contracts bring in workers as “manager’s”
They manage cleaning the floors
They manage washing the dishes
Mind you
It’s all lies
One could also ask, when does an ‘immigrant’ with citizenship become an Australian, hence, can choose to work in any occupation, sector or not.
Many potential applicants e.g. accountants, can be in country if they come through a study pathway, after (or round) graduation successfully do the CPA exams (not easy) for recognition, eligible from study for a post grad work visa, gain work experience, apply for skilled migration onshore (under the maximum cap) and then you wait, and wait….. why a significant number of migration applicants are stuck on bridging visas due to processing delays. If rejected, must leave the country….
Those skilled migrants coming from offshore often struggle in finding work too; often little to do with actual skills…..
I would like to know how many people from the last 20 years went on to ‘good’ jobs and a middle class life.
No one has explained to me why we need such a large pool of unskilled labor fighting over very little. We do need some migration at the bottom end but in my 20 year experience in the workforce and watching this unfold it just smells very much like a depressing wages scam.
I don’t say no altogether I just query the numbers. Underemployment is common at the bottom end so why do we need so many people? It just reeks of pushing down wages and the evidence finally seems to be coming in to support that. I don’t know why so many people are so afraid to call it what it is.
Why skilled migrations struggle to find work is 3 things – there’s not enough work, racism or they actually don’t really have skills.
Why not spend some time researching immigration and employment in Australia from ABS, APH etc., including data analysis on occupations, skills etc. vs. musing? With data you can support claims versus presenting subjective opinions which do not provide clarity….
Excuse me?
Did you read the article? It says everything I’ve been saying for years. I’m adding my experience to what has finally been accepted by the RBA and the Grattan Institute.
I’m also adding that some of our labor issues come from people refusing to work certain jobs. Which you can see online every day on many user generated sites where people discuss work.
The author of these articles agrees with my basic premise that our mass migration program was a con to suppress wages. I throw in the observations about the value of the lower end of that equation.
I guess some of you know better than the author! Enjoy the boot on your face of depressed wages once you were brainwashed into believing millions of migrants had no impact on wages. I can’t believe ppl fell for that it was so obviously untrue.
Satisfying to see the truth come out. Confusing why amateurs say the RBA are wrong. Confusing why ppl think many poor migrants is a good idea. Weird people think those funded by the taxpayer owe us nothing
All very well ‘I’m adding my experience to what has finally been accepted by the RBA and the Grattan* Institute.’, but you need to be much more specific on what is it you are claiming, exactly?
Further, above is not direct support, let alone evidence, and would probably reflect the IPA and the LNP too, while personal anecdotes are neither evidence nor a sample population, just opinions.
This statement ‘The author of these articles agrees with my basic premise that our mass migration program was a con to suppress wages‘ may reflect the neo-nativist zeitgeist of ageing Australian voters, LNP/Labor, media and think tanks, but suggests there has been a sudden and recent realisation that immigration has never had any benefits for the nation and society since European settlement, while ignoring basic future demographics and workforce dynamics.
Very simple to present circular narratives aka Australian media i.e. they said, he said, I saw etc. without substantive evidence, then demand simplistic solutions aka Brexit or Trump, to solve a non issue?
Seems like a ‘libertarian trap’ to me?
*Same Grattan Institute, sponsored by some banks, misunderstanding demographic data (unlikely) to claim no need to increase the SCG super contribution guarantee, as the pension would be sufficient, so even super could be discarded; this was criticised all round as suboptimal. Especially when issues of demography, ageing workforce and increase dependency ratios were egregiously ignored……
‘No free lunch: Higher superannuation means lower wages February 2020’ Grattan Institute
No one ever said immigration had no benefits. I do not want to stop immigration, just reduce the numbers and focus more on skilled.
The commonly accepted wisdom now by the experts is that mass migration did drag down skills. It was ALWAYS accepted prior to this that a small set of people in migrant dominated unskilled industry would be be worse off even if everyone else was better off.
The hatred of the working poor by the middle class is staggering. Our wages can suffer. Middle class unemployed can refuse to do our jobs. Yet we don’t matter. This is not an LNP or Libertarian belief. It is a left wing belief against what used to be called scab labor. It has its root in the union movement.
When we check out grocery or wait on your tables it is hard to forget how much you really hate us and what you really think of us and the work we do and how little you care about it. So long as you get your groceries, your house cleaned or dinner served you don’t care what impact things have on us. And of course it is your human right to use welfare to avoid doing our jobs no matter how long you have been unemployed.
I’d never vote for Trump or Brexit or Qanon but you can see why people head down the path with the contempt shown when working class people simply say ‘hey, my wages are being undercut’ or ‘gee why don’t those people on welfare who are healthy get a job’
Enjoy the rest of your conversation where you just crap all over people who make the wheels of the country turn. Obviously we are expendable.
drag down wages*
I’m out. The contempt is appalling. It makes it hard for me to want to go to work to know so many people think it’s fine to refuse to do my job and so many people are totally fine with our wages and conditions suffering under mass migration. Disgraceful.
You have the right to your opinions and beliefs, while ignoring credible research, but this is exactly how the US ended up with Trump, UK with Brexit, and Australia with the LNP….. no action on climate science (till dragged kicking and screaming…), denial of Covid etc. or other hard or serious issues while everyone defers to their beliefs and sentiments; does not support progress.
As someone whose industry was decimated by this then lied to for years I have a right to be upset when they finally admitted the truth was what we always knew
‘ There are no doubt many factors at play here — and perhaps it’s a collective failure — but it is hard to not lay the blame on federal government leadership. Skills shortages are not new, so why not do something about it? It might be a better option than cutting uni funding.’ This federal government is – alongside many in big corporate Australia – particularly addicted to the doing of nothing [effective], other than lining its and its sponsors’ pockets and barrelling away at political misuse of public funds.
So tell me where multiculturalism fits within low-paid workforces. And greedy Americanised business clones focussed upon casualization. And while rumination top-of-mind; why Australia votes for Morrison LNP Government?
I’m watching my loved nation failing. Inequity, greed and total absence of visional, political leadership no longer accountable or transparent. Our forefathers who built a nation where everyone stood back to back . . . replaced.
You and me both graybul! I was a skilled migrant 50 years ago – keen to join a nation clearly fairer and more egalitarian than the society I was leaving in the UK. Now, I feel betrayed.
We, all of us feel, know we have been betrayed. Question is: Are there sufficient remnants left to re-take Parliament by vote? We need younger generations flooding forecourts. We need restore our language, values and historical uniqueness, strengthened by reminding many new Australians of why they came, and what they left behind, discarded, in favour of what now offered. A freedom, commitment to others for those who did not have the same, new opportunities. We need to restore our values, and reject insidious intrusion of other foreign cultures so easily corrosive to our Australian culture. Not to be denied but chosen to strengthen, broaden our own culture . . . by our choice, our will, and our future.
Pfft what culture. I can’t say the Anglo culture of the 1950’s is great and what I want to go back to or restore.
I’m in a hard place where people say I’m racist if I reject some parts of foreign cultures but surprise I actually reject a lot of Anglo culture too so there.
We need to chart a new way forward for the world where we all have human rights, equality, justice, dignity and share prosperity. We should take the best of all the cultures and mash it all together and then add in some new ideas too.
Agree with you on that one; Brexit voted for by mostly older and retired middle class (esp. home counties in south), was predicated upon ‘Anglo exceptionalism’, dog whistling of immigrants/EU and imported US radical right libertarian ideology to divide a nation, hence, tieing the UK up in long term trade and supply line issues….. that’s what Anglo culture seems about now….
Well said
‘So tell me where multiculturalism fits within low-paid workforces‘, easily and forever?
In Australia’s history, in addition to British, there were Irish and Europeans, including Jews till WWII. Post WWII low skilled from Central Eastern and Southern Europe, later Vietnam, Lebanon, Turkey, former Yugoslavia, along with former British colonies in Asia.
Precisely Drew. A virtual polyglot nation early-on from mid 1800’s. Mixed cultures formed within a United Kingdom legal framework. A union? Requiring of all acknowledgment of ‘an other’ for both to survive and prosper. Later, accelerated by global wars and old world alliances. Bound by location, distance from European birthright progressively fading over time. Replaced, struggled with, emerging sense of nationhood in our own right. Yet to fulfill? And then, world-wide cyclone. Technological era churning all values, language, beliefs, cultures. Options: Submit and accept or, once again unite, demand visional, accountable, transparent leadership. Stand back to back. Survive and prosper.
Think I find what’s going on in Australia, UK, US and then periphery of the EU i.e. Poland and Hungary as not healthy for democracy and is more about focusing people on their nostalgic rear view mirror of the good old days….. that never existed but attractive to older voters.
Much of the same Anglo/US nativist and/or conservative libertarian ideology is responsible for the lack of leadership and policies in favour of sentiments, beliefs and feelings, but the same ‘libertarian’ ideology requires support via authoritarianism; oxymoronic.
Our “forefathers”.. forgetting about our “mothers”.. but we’ll leave aside half the country who did most of the work and concentrate on “built a nation where everyone stood back to back”.. It never happened. This land was stolen and handed to English landed gentry… a typical British colonial model. You conveniently left out the theft and the denial of theft throughout the whole of our white colonial history…. and we can see how well we’ve done… with the land destroyed, including the Great Barrier Reef.. underwater aquifers drained or polluted, the original people driven to the margins and left to die in poverty and sickness….
There should be a reckoning, a truth telling about our past. We need a treaty with the original inhabitants and then maybe we might be mature enough to try for an independent republic instead of a failed colony.
Yes, pillaged country and decimated the first people, the Age has started a series on truth telling, we need our schools to educate us in first people culture, it is part of our emergence , understanding and survival.
Perhaps if the governments hadn’t gutted the TAFES around the country………..?
While the focus is upon foreign ‘immigrants’, whether skilled or the more significant int’l student temporary churn over (latter are also misleadingly described as ‘immigrants’ suggesting permanence, not true), although apart from indigenous we are all immigrants?
Further, it also ignores a demographic fact at the end, we cannot work forever nor do many people want to…. but suggested we do. How many people are leaving, esp. baby boomers, the workforce in greater numbers due to retirement and/or lifestyle changes; workforces like infrastructure are not static but dynamic and need to be viewed over the long term, includes for skills planning.
The Howard government’s assertion that technical education should be privatised or run by the Commonwealth (which knew what was needed better than the states) led to a marked decline in state run VET or TAFE services. Indeed, the site near the station where the sign that promised a new Commonwealth tech was only sold as a vacant lot a few years ago to a property developer. Then there was the waste of money poured into the ‘for profit’ techs that suckered ambitious but poor people to ‘study’ with them only to collapse without delivering the promised education. Many state governments cut funding for technical education. Likewise Universities have suffered death by a thousand cuts, culminating with the denial of jobkeeper during 2020. Maybe fewer submarines could be transformed to a better educated and trained population.
Add to that the push for university degrees and professional careers. So many people were unsuited to this path and wound up overeducated, unemployed and in debt.
The Government convinced a generation they had to be professionals. There was a stigma against doing anything else. A % of these students, many of them men, failed to thrive at uni. I see their stories online all the time. Now they are broke, directionless and mad at tradies and mad at a society that they think steered them away from being a wealthy tradie.
People in my generation have hang ups about pursuing careers outside trades and white collar professions. Some people are suited to being a retail manager, a chef (which is a trade anyway), a restaurant manager and so on. The money isn’t huge but it’s better than refusing to work as the only jobs available are beneath you.
It’s good to aim high but realistically not everyone can achieve that. We had to bring in migrants because the majority of the population believe a good % of jobs are not for people like them.
I went to Uni for a couple of years – maths, physics, geology etc, but preferred doing technical things with my hands, so quit and took up a trade – Advanced Trade Carpenter/Joiner, then eventually, after 25 yrs doing all manner of building, went back to study to put what I knew to further use – Quantity Surveyor&Building Surveyor. Strangely, my offsider for a while, building, had an honours degree in Cellular Biology, yet he also preferred ‘working with his hands’ – he could pot, weld, cast metal, panel beat, build virtually anything, including a car…….this obsession with ‘get a degree’, has seen degrees devalued to a job meal ticket, not much advanced from ‘learning on the job. And the Neo Liberal Student Loan scam has seen generations indebted before they even start work. We went to Uni because we wanted to, not because society virtually forced us to…..and it was virtually free!
“The new Perrottet government in New South Wales is also keen to reopen the floodgates to foreign labour, with the premier flagging his goal of a “big NSW” despite Sydney having insufficient infrastructure and housing supply to keep up with population growth over the past 20 years.”
If he can’t import the workers he’ll breed them himself.
Hard to imagine any child of a right wing Lib politician growing up to have to do any real work
The LNP is an all round bludger domestically and internationally. It wants other countries to deal with climate change drivers, the USA to protect us and the world at large to continue to raise, educate and provide Australia with skilled workers. As Morrison proudly boasted recently we are good at digging stuff up – a highly skilled, intellectual and fulfilling pursuit apparently key to our participation in an increasingly science and technology driven world. Adding value domestically to Australians’ lives and work is a stretch too far, a cost too high to bear and beyond the wit of the current government.