If you want a textbook example of why Australia’s ‘skilled’ visa system is broken, look no further than engineering.
Here is an industry where just over half of engineers graduating from Australian universities are from overseas, and skilled migrants account for 58% of the engineering workforce. Yet, the industry constantly complains of labour shortages and calls for more immigration while nearly half of migrant engineers sit unemployed:
New data suggests almost half of migrants actively seeking a job as an engineer are currently unemployed…
The National Skills Commission Labour Market Insights to June 2022 found 47 per cent of the group did not have work, although vacancy numbers in engineering continued to be the highest seen since 2012.
Engineers Australia CEO Romilly Madew said many skilled migrants in Australia could fill these roles but employers were biased against hiring migrants.
According to the federal government’s own historical skills shortage data, engineering has not been in shortage for years. So why has the federal government forever kept engineers on the skills shortage list, thus ensuring that they continue to oversupply the labour market?
Why is Australia importing engineers when there are minimal shortages and insufficient jobs? is it to add to the pool of underemployed and unemployed? Is it to rob developing nations of their skilled workers? Is it to suppress engineering wages?
Yet again, Australia’s skilled visa program has been exposed as a giant fraud that has failed to meet its original intent. The system needs fundamental reform, not further expansion and enabling by the Albanese Government.
