This is a really interesting article and it (along with the pandemic dip in migration from overseas) has caused me to reflect on the way this issue has been discussed in Australia. When I was more politically engaged and at university, 20 odd years ago, nobody with left leanings (myself included obviously) would have dreamed of linking higher levels of migration with suppression of local wages. Anyone doing so would have been dismissed as a racist. The doctrine of the day was that increased migration created more jobs and that was the end of the discussion. The only people openly disagreeing with that were people like Pauline Hanson who held other genuinely racist views. It appears very likely that that was not entirely true and that the impact on employment and wages, particularly in low-skilled occupations has been more profound than anyone was prepared to admit. There has been much made in recent years about the increased focus on identity politics type issues and the subsequent loss of support for centre-left parties from working class communities but I can’t help but wonder whether this issue was where some of that began. I would be interested to hear others thoughts on this. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-12/verrender-skilled-worker-shortage-mass-migration-low-wage-growth/100285202

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PuddingPlease Hanson’s biggest appeal was to the traditional working class after they were royally stuffed by the left in the rush to embrace a global economy. While her views on race (and a few other things…) are incredibly abhorrent, it doesn’t mean that everything she supports is garbage (believe me, I’d love her and her ilk to disappear from the Australian political landscape though). I think it’s a lot more complicated than just being about migrant workers – we’re no longer primarily a manufacturing economy, but have veered towards a service economy. Combined with the shift to an increasingly casualised workforce there is little security remaining for lower paid workers. We now have access to a plethora of cheap short-life consumer goods, but I honestly think we’re fiddling while Rome burns –socially, economically and environmentally. Unless we’re prepared to make some very hard decisions about developing a more sustainable economy and finding incentives to slow population growth (but not by employing racist tropes) then, frankly, we’re fucked. Not sure if I answered your question…? 😏

I agree it devalues the workforce. The people on skilled migration or working visas deserve a decent wage and work conditions too. Especially when so many do the work others won’t. Most are just trying to provide for their family here and also overseas and do what they can to do so. Our school cleaner was a high school teacher overseas but of course doesn’t qualify to teach here and would have just taken whatever work he could get to look after his family. A school family own the local servo. They were doctors in India.

MizHops I actually think in some ways that the biggest distortion to the labour market may have been in the student visa program. Casual hospitality and retail jobs are ideal for students but they are also ideal jobs for people whose ability to work may be limited by disability or caring responsibilities and or people attempting to transition back into the workforce part time. To be blunt, when faced with the choice between employing a series of healthy, young people with few family responsibilities or a middle aged person with adult children and ageing parents to support (or a disability), most employers would see it as an easy call and employ the students. As uncomfortable as I am with the language used in the removed post, I am also forced to acknowledge that service stations were absolutely notorious for employing large numbers of international students and deliberately underpaying them in order to make their businesses more profitable. For people looking for retail work, those practices likely had a tangible impact on their ability to find and retain employment. The really difficult thing about the student programs is how unequal the impact was likely to have been and this is the bit that makes me squirm today. If you are an academic, international students ensure you employment, which is great. If you are a government (or a tax-payer in a professional career I suppose), they allow you to have a higher education sector without needing to pay for it yourself, which is nice. For people reliant on low paid customer-facing work, the programs seem to provide few benefits and force already marginalised workers to compete for a shrinking pool of work. And that’s really never been publicly acknowledged by anyone until recently as far as I can see. I’m not for a moment suggesting that people shouldn’t be permitted to migrate but it might be worth investigating who actually benefits from bringing people into the country on the basis of their job-ready skills. Providing settlement support for the vulnerable might look more expensive on a ledger but for most people (including the refugees and asylum seekers involved) it might actually benefit the broader community more than arranging migration purely in terms of importing workers to keep wages low.

We’ve also had a phenomenally high number overseas students on those visas. I don’t know what the figures were just before Covid hit, but in 2005 Melbourne had the highest number of international students in the world on a per capita basis. And having worked in the tertiary sector I know that those students are all about the dollar value and nothing to do with any diversity they might bring to the university community.

ABC article re: skilled worker shortages

PuddingPlease

This is a really interesting article and it (along with the pandemic dip in migration from overseas)...