Several readers have usefully referenced the Government’s own data on 457 visas for international labour, the subject of a current attack by unions and Julia Gillard. A quick glance through the document is quite illuminating. First, the via appears already to be in decline as the labour market loosens:
The same applies to residencies arising from the visa:
But the aggregate total has to yet fall:
WA punches above its weight as you’d expect:
But industry concentrations are pretty widespread. It would be interesting to compare visa’s to total employees in any sector:
Mining and IT will stand out as percentage users of the visas given their relatively small numbers of employees. Also, no doubt there will be abusers of the program as there are in all such things and it may be that tightening of rules is needed. But honestly, given the program constitutes just 0.86% of the Australian labour force and appears to be in decline anyway, we might rightly conclude that the recent high profile kerfuffle created by the Government is more about a new brand of the politics of xenophobia than any genuine issue.
