Prime Minister Scott Morrison has highlighted workforce skills as the “single biggest challenge facing the Australian economy” in recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. Employer surveys also show it’s a top concern.
Adding to these concerns is an expected 85% fall in net overseas migration in 2020-21 from 2018-19 levels because of COVID-related border closures. The Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) has stressed the urgency of increased and more flexible temporary and permanent migration as global competition for skills and talent intensifies in the post-pandemic recovery. Australia also risks losing talented individuals to more attractive destinations.
Federal Immigration Minister Alex Hawke is more optimistic. He says the pandemic hasn’t harmed Australia’s reputation as a migrant destination. At a CEDA livestream discussion yesterday, Hawke said migration would be crucial for Australia’s recovery from the pandemic.
Get news that’s free, independent and based on evidence.
What is being overlooked in this debate is that, as a recent Productivity Commission report notes, Australia might not really have a skills shortage. Rather, the problem is a skills mismatch.
Why migration matters now
Australia typically relies on immigration for almost two-thirds of its population growth, and skilled migrants are an important source of talent.
COVID-related closures of national and state borders added to the problems of industry sectors that rely on temporary and permanent migrants to overcome skills shortages. Many have had trouble finding workers (e.g. fruit-picking) or will have trouble as the economy recovers (e.g. hospitality, digital and data opportunities).
CEDA recently launched a report calling for an increase in permanent skilled migration. This report and a 2019 CEDA report aim to show recent waves of migrants have not reduced wages or jobs of Australian-born workers.
CEDA’s latest report calls on the federal government to:
1. set up a government-regulated online platform for matching skills to jobs
2. update the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations Codes to ensure people with essential or cutting-edge skills can immigrate
3. be more transparent about how it assesses what occupations are in demand and included on the skilled occupation lists.
CEDA describes the Global Talent Scheme (GTS) as “very restrictive”. Minister Hawke acknowledged post-COVID Australia’s migration policies have to be more flexible and responsive. He pointed to the increased GTS intake of 15,000 spots in 2020-21, a tripling of last year’s allocation.
Yet the shape and make-up of the migration program remain unclear. Questions during yesterday’s discussion elicited few new details.
What are the issues with this approach?
According to the Productivity Commission, the way to modernise and grow the economy is via the three Ps: population, participation and productivity. As well as the population impacts of migration, CEDA claims to be offering solutions for both participation, as skilled migrants have “lower unemployment rates and higher labour-force participation rates”, and productivity, as skilled migrants are younger and contribute to human capital accumulation.
In practice, increased migration works by growing the population, increasing numbers of taxpayers and producing so-called spillover effects in housing, retail and domestic tourism etc.
CEDA cites an Australian National University study that found migrants account for 7% of the average rate of labour productivity growth between 1994�`95 and 2007�`08. However, the Productivity Commission reports

productivity has slowed since the mid-2000s despite high migration.
Evidence indicates employers are not nurturing talent from migration to its full potential. Nearly one in four permanent skilled migrants work in a job beneath their skill level. Research also highlights the need to tackle the disconnect between identified skills shortages and the unwillingness of employers to employ new migrants.
How to fix these problems
The solutions CEDA proposes are largely quick fixes and echo previous recommendations from CEDA and employer groups like the Australian Chamber of Commerce. Stop-gap government measures to help employers fill shortfalls include a 50% wage subsidy for apprentices or trainees and tailored quarantine arrangements for seasonal workers. But the systemic problem of skills matching, leading to underemployment and unemployment, has been neglected.
This problem is not unique to Australia. Migrants do essential work in many countries. Research has found many countries have designated these migrants �` including those typically considered “low-skilled” such as crop pickers, care assistants and hospital cleaners �` as “key” or “essential” workers whose supply needs to be protected and even expanded during the health emergency.
In Australia, some analysts have pointed to the skills shortage as a policy ruse to distract attention from the lack of infrastructure investment to cope with rapid population growth as well as employers wishing to restrict wages growth.
The problem is worse among international graduates and students �` 60% of the latter lost their jobs during the pandemic. Yet they studied in universities and through VET providers that were supposedly providing them with the skills Australian employers need.
The Business Council of Australia (BCA) has recognised the need to improve skills matching and development. It has called for a more flexible vocational education and training (VET) system that emphasises life-long learning with innovations like micro-apprenticeships. This allows for employees and apprentices to be rapidly trained and regularly upskilled in response to technology and market changes.
This is similar to micro-credentials �` qualifications based on smaller blocks of learning. These can formalise soft and hard skills attained at work, such as teamwork, critical thinking and problem solving. They can also help fill skill gaps such as working with big data.
Vocational education and training should focus on skills needed to capitalise on the opportunities of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
There are other gaps in the CEDA proposals. For example, when the federal government announced its Modern Manufacturing Strategy in October 2020, it recognised that not enough manufacturers have experience in scaling up in areas that provide good returns. Despite a brief mention of data scientists in regard to skilled occupation lists not being updated since 2013, the CEDA report largely focuses on traditional industries.
Our research shows Australia needs to develop new skills in disruptive technologies to capitalise on the opportunities of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The pandemic has simply added to the urgency of increased collaboration between the higher education and VET sectors, employer organisations, industry and government to deliver more targeted and flexible skills development programs.
www.samigration V.3612

There are fears that more people will be separated by the introduction of a minimum salary level for those wanting UK family visas. Families living in the UK and abroad have raised concerns about what new rules will mean for them as they try to reunite with foreign spouses. In December, the Home Office, which says migration to the UK is too high, announced a package of measures to reduce net migration, following a spike in arrival numbers. V.5318
Click here for full article

An Ethiopian asylum seeker, who does not speak English, claims he was duped by a senior immigration official into paying an admission of guilt fine when he thought he was paying for bail.Two Western Cape High Court judges have condemned the official`s `deplorable` behaviour, set aside the fine, and ordered the immigration official be taken off the case. Tsegaye Esyas claims Annelise van Dyk treated him like an animal which led to him attempt suicide while in police cells. V.5320
Click here for full article

EREMY MAGGS: I want to stay with crime now. Individuals with a criminal record may be faced with significant challenges when seeking employment, I think that’s a given. Here in South Africa, employers may legally exclude an applicant from consideration for a position if having a clean criminal record is what is termed an inherent requirement of the job. That phrase, inherent requirement, is important, but what exactly does that mean, and when can an applicant be lawfully excluded for having a criminal record? V.5321
Click here for full article

As a South African who has adopted a nomadic work lifestyle alongside my wife, Ingrid Lotze, I’ve been an interested observer of South Africa’s snail-pace digital nomad visa (DNV) development process. Despite the optimism surrounding its introduction, the visa seems to miss several crucial marks for digital nomads like us. V.5322
Click here for full article

DA MP says hours lost continue to result in persons being unable to collect their ID documents due to unmanageable queues The DA has been inundated with complaints that the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) systems are offline, resulting in long queues and delayed processing of documents. Through questions posed to the Minister, the DA can now reveal that the DHA has lost over 77 years’ worth of working hours due to system downtime and load-shedding from 2019 to date. Concerningly, this data only relates to hours lost for the application of smart IDs, meaning decades more of working hours could have been additionally lost in other spheres such as passport or visa applications. V.5314
Click here for full article

Home Affairs’ seemingly endless court battles set the department back more than R110-million between April 2023 and the end of February this year. This was revealed in a written parliamentary response by minister Aaron Motsoaledi. He said the department accumulated a litigation bill of R117 692 996.3, higher than the R72 637 944.51 spent the year before. V.5315
Click here for full article

Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) this week revealed that Cape Town International Airport (CTIA) has achieved a ground-breaking milestone by processing more than 10 million passengers over a single financial year. This is the highest number of regional and international passengers processed since COVID-19 V.5316
Click here for full article

In recent years, South Africa has seen a significant influx of immigrants from various African countries, as well as other parts of the world. This has raised important questions about the country`s immigration policies and their impact on job creation for both locals and immigrants. The South African immigration system, like many other countries, is a complex and ever-evolving process that aims to balance the country`s economic needs with its social and cultural interests. Let`s take a closer look at how this system intersects with job creation in South Africa. The South African government implemented the Immigration Act of 2002, which outlines the country`s immigration policies and procedures. Under this act, foreigners are required to obtain a visa or permit to enter, work, or study in South Africa. The type of visa or permit required depends on the intended purpose of the individual`s visit and their country of origin. V.5312
Click here for full article

Due to system downtime and load-shedding, the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) lost nearly 141,000 hours of Smart ID application and production time between the 2019/20 and 2022/23 financial years. Minister Aaron Motsoaledi revealed this figure in a recent response to questions raised in Parliament by Democratic Alliance MP Adrian Roos. Motsoaledi provided a breakdown of smart ID production and application hours lost to technical difficulties and load-shedding per province for each financial year from 2019/2020. These disruptions hit home Affairs offices in the Eastern Cape the hardest, with over 34,000 hours to rotational power cuts and system downtime. Mpumalanga offices lost the next-highest number of hours at 17 V.5313
Click here for full article

Home Affairs Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi has said the public has shown great support for the final White Paper on citizenship, immigration and refugee protection which appeared in the Government Gazette on Wednesday. Briefing the media, he addressed what he saw as a long-overdue need to replace an outdated Citizenship Act, as well as enact proposed changes to existing legislation. V.5306
Click here for full article