Labour Force Outcomes of Engineers in Australia

Like other developed countries Australia imports skilled labour, including engineers, to meet labour market requirements. Despite the demand for skilled labour, there are claims in the migration literature about ‘brain-waste ’ of skilled migrants in host countries. To investigate if ‘brain-waste ’ is an issue for engineering migrants, this paper reviews census data to compare if the employment and occupational experiences of skilled migrants in Australia with foreign engineering training with those of the locally born or child migrants. The investigation was inspired by a Canadian study (Boyd & Thomas 2001) and follows similar methods. The result of the study shows that, in general, those with foreign engineering qualifications and training, have poorer labour market outcomes than the locally born and those that migrated as children and have Australian engineering qualifications. Three factors emerged from the study as influencing labour market outcomes for foreign trained migrants: duration in the host country; level of educational qualification; and region of origin. Also, an unexpected finding from the study is that 50 % for the native born and 60-70 % for the foreign born are not working in the engineering industry