Skilled Migrant Professionals October 2014 | Page 27

Migration

Increasing productivity by
harnessing migrants’ skills

A

ustralia would see productivity boosted and an increase in the
availability of skilled workers through a national program to
help skilled migrants into professional jobs, according to recent
research.
The programs would also harness the skills and cultural knowledge of
professionals from non-English speaking countries to help access overseas markets, according to the research commissioned by settlement
agency AMES and unveiled at the Federation of Ethnic Communities’
Councils of Australia (FECCA) 2013 Conference on the Gold Coast.
A review of the effectiveness of the Skilled Professional Migrants Program (SPMP) – which aims to bridge the cultural divide faced by some
migrants relaunching their careers in Australia – found that a large number of professional migrants faced considerable challenges in finding
work in their fields.
Around 130,000 people arrived in Australia as skilled migrants in
2012-2013. Around 10 per cent of these – or 13,000 people, mostly
from non-English speaking backgrounds – have trouble finding work

Laurie Nowell

appropriate to their training, according to ABS figures.
And only 53 per cent of migrants who come to Australia under the
Skilled Migrant Program ultimately work in the same occupation they
nominated as immigrants.
According to the 2006 Census, up to 40 per cent of tertiary qualified
migrants aged between 25 and 34 and 38 per cent of those aged 35 top
54 were in low or medium skilled occupations.

October 2014 | www.smpmagazine.com.au

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