THE United Kingdom is the main source of foreign workers being recruited to plug skills shortages in Australia, a survey has found.

Engineering, labouring and skilled trades are the positions these migrants are most often used to fill, according to the Manpower Borderless Workforce report.

Among the top 10 countries from which foreign workers migrate to Australia, China ranked second and South Africa third.
The international survey also found Australia was among the top 10 sources of foreign workers for New Zealand, the UK, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, India and South Africa.

However, new figures show the Australian love affair with the UK is over with 2600 Aussies returning home each month, up from 1750 a month.

The exodus has been sparked by the economic downturn of the last nine months and a drop in the value of the British pound.

The cost of living in London also has skyrocketed. Just 15 per cent of respondents felt business and governments were doing enough to slow outward migration and attract workers to Australia.

Business SA chief executive Peter Vaughan said a lag in education and training meant Australia had to deal with the
resulting skills shortage “crisis” by importing labour.

Southern Cross Personnel’s Michael Racher said the skill sets of British and Australian workers were similar.

The overseas recruitment specialist firm director, who is an English immigrant himself, said Australian Government advertising and television shows like Neighbours influenced Britons to migrate.
“Friends and relatives who have moved also have an influence,” he said.

- adelaidenow.com.au

Sydney is in the top 10 of the world’s best cities to live, according to Mercer’s 2008 Worldwide Quality of Living Index.

Ranked at number 10, Sydney came in ahead of Melbourne at 17, Perth at 21 and Adelaide at 29. Zurich scored highest for overall quality of living.

Sydney dropped one spot from ninth in last year’s survey, but was well ahead of Singapore (32), Tokyo (35), London (38) and New York, the benchmark city (49).

Mercer’s analysis is based on an evaluation of 39 qualities of living criteria for each city including political, social, economic and environmental factors, personal safety and health, education, transport and other public services.
The survey of 215 cities is conducted to help governments and major companies when placing employees on international assignments.

According to the Mercer analysis, Sydney’s score of 106.3 well exceeded the 90 point standard for a high international quality of living.

Sydney received perfect scores in housing and near-perfect scores in socio-cultural environment, economic environment, consumer goods, natural climate and recreation.

Mercer spokesperson Rob Knox said the results were great news for Australian companies trying to attract overseas workers to help ease pressure on the skills shortage.

“The fact that Australian cities enjoy among the best standards of living in the world reinforces the attractiveness of Australia for workers and for multi-national organisations,” Mr Knox said.

- Government News

The Queensland Government is being called upon to boost its use of state-sponsored skilled migration to meet labour market demands after it was revealed business sponsored double the contribution of all states to scheme over the past few years.

Department of Immigration and Citizenship figures from recent years show that state and territory sponsored skilled migration forms less than 10 per cent of the overall skilled migration program whereas employer sponsored migration is closer to 20 per cent.

About 7500 of the skilled migrants were state and territory sponsored visa applicants.

Skilled workers migrating independently continue to comprise more than half the program.

Immigration Minister Senator Chris Evans says there is the “capacity within the Federal Government’s permanent skilled migration program for states and territories to sponsor overseas skilled workers in occupations in demand”.

Queensland tally’s third in the nation in regard to the distribution of state-specific and regional migration visa grants, with numbers jumping from 2413 in 2004-05 to 3084 in 2006-07.

This is well behind leaders Victoria and South Australia, who granted 9178 and 7158 respectively in 2006-07.

Queensland supplied 6 percent of Skilled Independent Regional (SIR) (Provisional) visas in 2006-07, just behind Western Australia with 7 percent. South Australia granted a phenomenal 77 percent of SIRs for that year.

SIR (Provisional) visas aim to attract skilled migrants wishing to live in a regional or low population growth area in Australia but who are not able to meet the criteria to be granted a permanent visa.

Evans says the Government will consider providing greater flexibility for states and territories under the sponsorship program to enable them to sponsor more skilled workers in areas of high demand.

“I will be encouraging the states and territories to increase their use of state-sponsored migration to better link skilled workers to the economic needs in their jurisdictions,” says Evans.

May’s Federal Budget added an additional 31 000 skilled migrants to the 2008-09 Migration Program.

Permanent skilled migration will make up 133 500 places in the migration program, which totals 190 300 for 2008-09.

Last financial year’s skilled migration outcome totalled some 108 500 places, which included a special allocation of 6000 extra skilled migration places announced the Government in February.

- Queensland Business Review

Australia is continuously seeing fall in unemployment rate and as per recent statistics, this year unemployment rate has fallen to a 33-year low of 4.1%. This has prompted the Australian Government to lift the quota for skilled migrants this financial year by 6000 so that more skilled workers can be allowed into the country, as most companies are in desperate need for skilled employees.

Its Immigration Minister, Evans, announced a package of measures to ease labor shortage by attracting more skilled workers to Australia, either permanently or on working holidays. This move is aimed to provide skilled manpower to construction and tourism sector, both of which are facing severe labour shortage.

To encourage working holiday’s visa, backpackers visiting Australia on working holidays will now be allowed an extra year on their visas if they spend three months in construction jobs in regional Australia. Australia is also contemplating to expand the reciprocal working holiday program to more countries, as working holiday workers have almost trebled from 2690 to 7990 during the last financial year. A three-member business panel has been appointed to advice on changing the controversial section 457 visa program. Panel is expected to submit its report by March 14th this year.

Source - http://www.canadaupdates.com/news/facing_shortage_of_skilled_workers_australia_lifts_restrictions_on_working_holiday_visas-28495.html

Emigration consultants and removal firms no longer need to market themselves, write Adele Shevel and Brendan Boyle.

Emigration consultants and removal companies report a big surge since late last year in the number of people leaving South Africa for new lives abroad.

The favoured destination remains Australia, with New Zealand a popular stepping stone, but skilled artisans, experienced professionals and highly trained specialists are leaving in droves for just about any country that will have them — and they’re not all white.

“The last two months have been quite depressing in this business,” said David Wilcocks, an emigration consultant at Four Corners Emigration in Cape Town.

“We haven’t done any advertising. I will not advertise for essential skills like nurses, doctors and teachers, although they do come in,” he said.

Emigration consultants don’t need to market themselves when the jobs pages of newspapers like The Times are plump with adverts from mining, engineering, pharmaceutical and financial services companies around the world.

“The Future is Yours … in Australia” said a three-quarter page advertisement for Barrick, the Australian gold mining company, in The Times this week.

International SOS advertises for doctors, nurses and other health professionals for positions around the world and Profiled is advertising for engineers and geologists to work in the Gulf. The Engineering Council of South Africa estimated earlier this year that one qualified engineer was leaving almost every day and the Southern African Migration Project said in a report backed by the Institute for Democracy that nearly half of 1700 health professionals polled in a recent survey hoped to be out of the country within five years.

Crown Relocations managing director Ian Pettey said his removals company was handling three times the number of family emigrations it handled a year ago.

He said that at one recruitment expo last September, 9000 people had signed up to leave. “They’ve got their permits and they’re leaving the country now. Guys are leaving the country lock stock and barrel and locking the door behind them,” he said.

Wilcocks said his company had experienced a 500% to 600% increase in emigration inquiries since last year.

Wessel Ludewig of Global Migration SA said he received up to 180 e-mailed inquiries a day from people asking how to get out permanently or for a few years of exploratory foreign work experience. About 25 to 30 of those are serious inquiries from highly qualified people thinking about going.

A European diplomat told Business Times there had been a marked increase in the number of inquiries about exercising dormant citizenship rights. “A lot of people seem to be checking their status and trying to make sure they have a passport in the drawer in case the do decide they want out,” he said.

“During the first half of last year, we saw a steady increase in inquiries. That trickle by late last year became a torrent. It is now a flood”, said Iain MacLeod, the director of Protea Pacific in New Zealand, which helps South Africans cross the ocean.

He said the overwhelming majority were white, but there were increasing numbers of coloured, Indian and black African applicants too.

Wilcocks said the nature of the inquiries had also changed. People were now asking where they could go, not just whether they could get into Australia. While most used to tick just one or two possible destinations, they now try for more.

“Now it’s: find me a place I qualify for and I’ll go. Previously, they would say Australia or one or two of the others, nowadays they tick them all,” he says, referring to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US and Britain.

Jacqui Simpson and her IT-specialist husband Lee are trying to get into Australia, but will look at Canada or the US if they fail.

She said that after they started talking to friends about going, more and more had decided to start the process themselves. “We’re in the middle of the process and we hope to have our permits for Australia by the end of the year or early next year,” she said.

Crime was a big factor in their decision, she said, but career prospects, earning power, schooling for their three-month-old daughter and the Eskom power crunch were crucial considerations, too.
“Australia is a first-world country where everything works and you can be safe,” she said. After working in a number of countries, her husband is keen to consolidate his career as a software architect.

Wilcocks said the skills shortage plaguing South Africa was a worldwide phenomenon.
“I can move a bricklayer into Australia faster than I can a stockbroker. Trade skills are in critical shortage in Australia, New Zealand and Canada,” he said.

Also on the demand list are engineers, doctors, nurses and midwives. Teachers, while not in demand, could generally find a job anywhere.

Wilcocks said applications for business visas had soared from an average of three or four per quarter to 12 in the past six weeks as entrepreneurs opted to cash in and risk their capital on a new start-up elsewhere. He finds the increase in business visa applications particularly discouraging.

“The clients I’ve signed up have a turnover of R5.5-million a year to R200- million a year.” Some are trying to sell their businesses, others are just closing up shop and will start over.

“What’s more worrying to me is if you’re turning over R200-million how many people are you employing? For every one business owner that leaves, so many people lose their jobs,” he said.
“The highly skilled see no promotion prospects . A lot want to do better financially, but have hit the ceiling. And they’re sitting with the crime problem.”

Sandra Krysztofiak, the national marketing manager for specialist immigration consultants Hitchcock & Associates, said there had been a marked increase in inquiries for migration to Australia.

“Particularly this year, since December, but a general trend started two years ago. The biggest fear is what is going to happen further down the line in terms of education and safety.

“The crime and education possibilities in the country are the number one factors,” said Dawn Raphaely, an Australian migration consultant with 16 years of experience.

MacLeod said emigrants included many who had backed the changes in 1994 and also their children, a second generation who had not experienced apartheid but who found that they could not get into university because of colour quotas and even if they could, they were the wrong colour to fill affirmative action positions on graduation.

“This new wave of emigration is, I strongly believe, not going to stop. It isn’t any longer just middle-class whites, it is their elderly parents, it is their children in their late teens and early 20s, their coloured neighbours and the Indian family living across the road,” he said.

Brent Rouse, the general manager of the Durban branch of removal and relocation company Elliott International, said there was a huge exodus, but the situation was not as grave as people made out. Though Pettey estimates that emigrants outnumber contractors coming in three-to-one, the flow is not one-way.

“There are people coming in to take the places of those who are leaving, but they’re contract workers coming for a short stay,” he said.

- The Times

Skilled South Africans are being transferred or head-hunted, writes Linda Vergnani.
Turn on the radio in Australia and you will hear the distinctive Afrikaans accent of Marius Kloppers who, as CEO of BHP Billiton, is spearheading the A147-billion takeover bid of BHP Billiton.

Kloppers is one of the SA corporate superstars who have lit up the Australian and international business firmament. Among the brightest is Gail Kelly, the new CEO of Westpac. Her earnings could top A12-million per year, making her the most highly paid businesswoman in Australia.
Kelly, who emigrated to the country with her family in 1997, is listed among the 50 most powerful women in global business by Fortune magazine.

Other leading business migrants include Giam Swiegers, CEO of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu in Australia, and Jonathan Pinshaw, chairman of The Just Group.
Australia’s Department of Immigration and Citizenship lists South Africa as one of the top 10 countries when it comes to gaining citizenship in terms of Australia’s business-skills migration programme. According to the department, 3996 South Africans settled permanently in Australia in the past two years.

In addition, there were more than 7800 South Africans in Australia on temporary 457 business visas by June 2007.

Although the average weekly earning in Australia were A1162 in 2007, starting over can be tough for business migrants. The cost of living in major cities such as Sydney can be exceptionally high and the mortgage on a modest house can easily exceed A1000 a week.

Craig Badings, director and head of corporate public relations at Savage & Partners, moved to Australia in 2003 with his teacher wife and two young children. He says unless South Africans are transferred to Australia or headhunted, they have to be prepared to “take a few backward steps” in their career and salary.

Badings, who founded Rainmaker Public Relations and was previously MD of Cape Town Citigate, initially took a role as account director in a public relations firm in Melbourne.
“You come here with all this experience but none of the Australian market, and you have to reinvent yourself,” he said. Badings likens it to a “mental enema”, which forces migrants to refocus their skills.

Now based in Sydney, which he loves, Badings says: “You’ve got to embrace Australian ways because South Africans are generally perceived as quite aggressive and arrogant.”
Badings says South Africans who pick up the “nuances around the boardroom table” and adapt to Australians’ polite, consensus approach to business will get ahead quicker .

Evan Petrelis, who was the 2007 New South Wales president of the Australia Africa Business Council, remarks that the integration of highly educated South African immigrants into the Australian workplace is on the whole excellent.

“While the ‘direct’ or sometimes even confrontational approach of some South Africans on occasion lands them in hot water, South Africans are generally respected and well regarded in the Australian business community as astute, entrepreneurial and hard- working,” he said.
Expatriate South Africans have “typically thrived in professional sectors, particularly accounting, law and finance”, and there are also a number of high-profile former South Africans leading blue-chip retail organisations.

Petrelis, who moved from London to Australia three years ago, notes that while most expatriate South Africans initially find jobs with organisations, many “move on to take advantage of Australia’s favourable business start-up incentives and go on to establish successful small businesses in a number of fields”.

- The Times

As the new temporary foreign workers change the face of Australia’s workplaces, business groups last week called for an immediate boost to skills training positions and unions expressed concern that increasing reliance on developing-country workers risked lowering general wages.

Immigration Department figures obtained by The Weekend Australian provide a snapshot of temporary foreign workers brought into the country on skilled migrant visas, which allow the employees to stay for up to four years.

The figures show the breadth of the skills crisis runs across the economy, as industries ranging from the healthcare sector to communications, mining and manufacturing import skilled workers to fill vacancies.

Workers from India, China and The Philippines are flooding into Australia’s hospitals, factories and construction sites as employers increasingly look to developing countries to combat chronic skills shortages.

In 2006-07, 46,680 temporary permits, known as 457 visas, were issued to foreign skilled workers.

Health and community services accounted for 16 per cent of all 457 visas issued, communication services 10 per cent, property and business services 10 per cent, manufacturing 9 per cent and construction 9 per cent. Professionals exceed the number of other 457 classes, making up seven of the top 10 skills categories.

But as employers search for workers, Australia is increasingly turning to developing countries to fill its vacancies. Britain contributed the most workers in the past six months (6130), followed by India (3670), The Philippines (1870), China (1850) and the US (1570).

British workers were most likely to work as doctors and nurses or in the property and business service sector. Americans were concentrated in communications.

But the use of Chinese workers grew rapidly, particularly in manufacturing. Indian workers were concentrated in communications and health, while workers from The Philippines were imported for building sites and manufacturing.

The rate at which the visas are issued continues to grow. While 46,680 visas were issued in the 12 months to June 30 last year, 25,750 were issued in the six months to the end of December - a 10 per cent increase on current trends.

While the resource-rich states of Western Australia and Queensland have been driving the so-called “two-speed” economy, the slower growth states of NSW and Victoria took the greatest numbers of 457 visa holders.

The chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, Heather Ridout, said the 457 program had grown quickly and business had become “dependent on it”.

“But the economy is also very dependent on it and we’re going to be very dependent on it if we want to keep the economy growing,” she said.

The director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University, Bob Birrell, said the most striking trend was the high take-up rate among citizens from the developing world.

“In the six months since the end of the financial year, China has overtaken the US. That’s a pretty good indication of where the program is going,” he said. “Five or six years ago, that was not the case.”

- Paul Maley, Australian IT

Sydney - After Spain, Australia is tops with the 2,000 or so people who pack up and leave Britain every week. Last year, 23,000 British people came to Australia for good, twice the number a decade ago.

Since the 1970s, Canberra has run a non-discriminatory immigration programme based on a points-scale for entry. There is no favouritism towards those from Britain or from any other English-speaking country.

There are pull and push factors that might help explain the popularity of starting afresh in the former colony.

Australia’s businesses are booming, unemployment is at a 30-year low and, with the great economic powerhouses of China and India not far away, the wide brown land is now perceived as being close to the action rather than a long way from it.

The push factors include the notion that Australia is Britain the way it used to be.
Michael Palin, the travel documentary maker and former Monty Python comic, says he feels at home in Australia. “It’s like Britain was 20 years ago,” he said during a recent visit.

Australia is busy enticing Brits to set up home halfway around the world.
“There are skilled vacancies in all states and territories in more than 90 occupations,” Immigration
Minister Chris Evans said at the start of an Australia Needs Skills campaign to lure nurses, plumbers, almost anyone with a skill.

The campaign plays to opinion polling which shows lots of British people are fed up with their lives. Screw Working in Staines, Sod London House Prices, Stuff London Traffic and Bugger it, I’m off to Adelaide are four of the campaign slogans.

Australian-born marketing executive Bill Muirhead, who designed the campaign, said it “might appear we are being rude, but a lot of things in Britain aren’t good.”

The South Australian state government has recruited British police officers, with the promise that they and their families will “enjoy a Mediterranean-style climate, a relaxed blend of beach, country and city lifestyle and a first-class family environment.”

The normal six-month training course for officers has been halved, and the state government in Adelaide is hoping to hire 200 police officers from Britain.

The vacancies at home, the skill shortages, in part reflect the jobs that Australians themselves have left to seek new lives abroad. There are now 1 million Australian expatriates.
There are Australians who are fed up with their country too.

They leave, hoping perhaps to join a cavalcade of greats who include former World Bank boss James Wolfensohn, feminist academic Germaine Greer, comedian Barry Humphries, art critic Robert Hughes, novelist Peter Carey, country singer Keith Urban and media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

- The Earth Times

Between July 2006 and June 2007, 28,562 working holiday visas were issued to Koreans, and since then the number has steadily grown.

The immigration officer at the Australian Embassy Paul Smith, however, said the number of Korean participants who are actually in Australia exceeds that of British participants, which is an indication of its popularity in Korea. Korea joined Australia’s Working Holiday Visa Program in 1995.

Three young Koreans who have left Korea to acquire English fluency and travel at the same time in Australia say it takes a decent level of English fluency to kill two birds with one stone.

Kim Hyung-dong, 27, went to Australia last year with little expectation, as he describes. “It just sounded charming to earn to travel and learn English,” Kim said.

It was his friend who motivated him. Soon after he arrived in Australia, Kim said he realized that there weren’t many options at hand.

He worked for a painting company owned by a Korean. And he shared a room with one of co-workers.

After a few months, he took a job picking oranges outside Sydney, as one of the requirements of the Australian Working Holiday Visa (WHV).

A WHV participant cannot work longer than six months with one employer, Smith explained, which is why it’s called “ a holiday visa.”

He said those who are more interested in working in Australia must apply for a working visa, not a working holiday visa.

Kim said that he had learned some basic English at the workplace and while traveling.

But “it would have been successful if I’d had some level of basic language before departure,” he said.

“I wish I had known more English. I’d suggest people who are going to Australia study English prior to their departure. It would get you better chances.”

Nam Wan-wook went to Australia in 1999 for a one-year stay. She considers her experience in Australia “ a grand success.”

She attributes her success to the Sydney Summer Olympics that took place during her program. “I volunteered during the Olympics, which nurtured my English fluency and confidence.”

Drawing on the experience and English skills she gained in Austrailia, Nam went on to do two more working holiday programs in Canada and New Zealand.

Jung Kyoung-jin, 28 has just returned from Australia for a temporary visit. She worked at various hair salons as a hairdresser.

She found an employer who wished to hire her, and returned home to switch to a working visa.

All three shared the view that without a certain level of English ability, it’s hard to get into an ideal work environment that people expect.

“It is almost out of the question to get a job you’d want without a certain level of English,” Jung says. “Simple jobs like a waitress using a rather limited level of language wouldn’t even be available unless you speak English. And those who fail to do that seem to create their own downfall.”

A few weeks ago, SBS televised a program that shed light on those Korean holiday workers in Australia whose holidays had not turned out that well. Among the interviewees were some who had fallen into prostitution or who had been abused by their employers ¯ mostly Korean.

To avoid such pitfalls Smith suggested students enroll a short-term English course when first arriving in Australia before hunting for a job.

“You would get to know people in the class,” which are more likely to help you land on a job, Smith said.

- Kim Se-jeong, The Korea Times

Public service job cutbacks in Tuesday week’s Federal budget, tipped to cost Canberra up to 3000 positions, is likely to have little impact on the capital’s worsening skills drought.

Today, The Canberra Times begins a three-part series on the extent of the ACT skills drought, which is worse here than anywhere else in Australia, and what could be done to fix it.

ACT Chamber of Commerce chief executive Chris Peters said business growth in the territory had been stalled for 18 months due to insufficient workers.

“About two years ago staff shortages were No13 on businesses lists of concerns. It’s been No1 for about 18 months, so it is the major impediment to business growth.”

The ACT Skills Commission and the chamber’s research shows the ACT will continue to be hardest hit of all Australian states and territories from a shortage of skilled and unskilled workers.
Access Economics research shows the ACT’s population is biased towards the 45 to 59 age group.

The demographics report compiled for the Skills Commission says the retirement timing of this age group and especially those aged 50 to 54 will have an even greater impact on the ACT workforce than it will nationally.

Access Economics expects increasing labour force participation rates up to 2010, with a reversal of that trend from 2010 to 2015 and a sharp reduction in participation after then because the main part of the baby boom generation will have reached the age of 65.

ACT Skills Commission chairman Derek Volker warns that today’s delays will become tomorrow’s disaster when too few people are available to look after elderly folk.

“It is not a skills problem, it’s more a people problem and if we don’t do something about it, it could turn into a crisis not too far down the track.”

Home Help Service ACT, a not-for-profit organisation that provides in-home support to the elderly and frail aged, could place 20 people immediately in its stretched ranks of carers.

Canberra employers scouring the country and overseas for employees are competing with the remainder of the western world which is suffering a skills drought.

Mr Peters said three factors contributed to the territory’s exceptional worker shortage:
Having both the lowest unemployment (2.4 per cent) and highest participation rates in Australia, which meant there weren’t too many stay-at-home mothers, or unemployed, to fill job vacancies;
The ACT and Adelaide had Australia’s two fastest aging populations; and
Older public servants in a former superannuation scheme had to retire before 55 to maximise their superannuation benefits.

“Canberra has the highest percentage of public servants than anywhere in Australia and they retire a decade earlier than the rest of Australia.” Mr Peters said Federal budget cuts in two weeks were expected to cause a net loss of 1000 people from the Commonwealth Public Service.
At best those leaving would have wide-ranging expertise.

“It depends on what the mix is I expect the mix will be fairly broad, which would be widely welcomed by the business community, but all of those won’t solve our problem.”

Shortages are in all sectors, from engineering, health, trades, services and construction.
Multinational construction company Bovis Lend Lease said employers were competing with unprecedented building in the booming Middle East countries, and project directors could command salaries of up to $300,000.

Hays senior regional director for Canberra Jane Donnelly said financial controllers and managers on salaries of up to $100,000 and $130,000 were in demand following the meltdown of global financial markets last year.

“Within the banking sector they are far more aware of the risk associated with certain products, they are seeking people with extensive risk analyst-type skills.”

Mr Peters said the shortage meant people were finding the service in places like restaurants, hairdressing salons and workshops slower. “If you have an accident driving home tonight in your car, typically your car will sit on the panel beaters shop floor for two weeks until they can get to it. That’s now. In three years time that [timeframe] will double.”

- John Thistleton, The Canberra Times