Australia Needs More Skilled Workers to Keep Economy Grow

Australian Immigration Minister Chris Evans said on Saturday that the nation's economy could not continue to grow unless more skilled migrant workers were allowed to work in the country.

Evans said many companies could not find enough skilled workers to enable their businesses to grow due to an ageing population.

So there is a huge demand. We will meet it by upskilling our own people, but we have got to make sure we have got strong skilled migration as well if we are going to grow, the minister told the Sky news.

Under a revised immigration program announced this week, Australia will substantially lift its intake of migrants, particularly those with necessary skills. That includes 190,300 in the permanent migration stream, 56,500 in the family stream and about 50,000 in the temporary skilled migration program - totaling more than 300,000.

Evans said in the past year the workforce grew more from imported labor than from Australians taking new jobs.

So we have got to have skilled migration to grow the economy. At the moment there is a real constraint on our capacity to grow because we just don't have enough workers, he said.

Evans also said there were significant skilled vacancies in the growth states, and there was a challenge to better connect those coming into Australia with areas where there were jobs.

Source: CRIEnglish