Finding jobs faster for new refugees a 'triple win' for Australia, report finds

Helping newly arrived refugees into jobs more quickly would be a “triple win” for Australia, benefiting vulnerable people, aiding Australia’s budget bottom line, and improving social cohesion and integration, a new report says.

The study by the Centre for Policy Development shows only 17% of refugees are in paid work 18 months after arriving in Australia, and they are finding jobs with limited prospects.

Many refugees who do find work in Australia take jobs below their skill or qualification level. About 60% held highly skilled jobs in their home countries, but about 26% find similar-level work in Australia.

Two out of five refugees find work as labourers, the report found, but demand for that work is diminishing in Australia’s transitioning economy. Others find work as drivers or machinery operators, but demand in those occupations is stagnant.

Five key factors hold refugees back from entering the workforce: limited English, a lack of work experience, poor health, limited opportunities for women and having been in Australia for a short period. Of those factors, speaking English well appears to be a key factor in finding work. 85% of refugees who speak English well are in the labour market, compared with 15% who do not speak English well.

Getting more refugees into work more quickly is the “bedrock for successful settlement”, the CDP report found.

“While employment rates improve with time, to get more refugees into jobs more quickly would be a triple win: it would benefit vulnerable people, boost the budget and improve social cohesion.”

If labour market outcomes could be improved by 25%, refugees could earn an additional $2.5bn over a decade, adding $1bn to the government’s bottom line, the report said.

Travers McLeod, chief executive of the CPD, said there were practical steps Australia could take to improve refugees’ chances of finding sustainable work in Australia.

“We can invest in targeted employment assistance focused on the barriers we have identified. We can leverage overseas best practice – better skills recognition, better private employer and community sponsorship options, and microfinance programs, particularly for women. We can establish a centre of gravity for post-arrival settlement services in Canberra.

“As our economy changes and demand for low-skill labour drops, it will only become harder for humanitarian migrants to secure work. We need to act now.”

State governments around the country have established dedicated refugee employment programs. The NSW government has partnered with major companies such as Westpac, Woolworths, Telstra, Harvey Norman, AMP and Australia Post in the Refugee Employment Support Program to help 7,000 refugees into work in western Sydney and the Illawarra.

In Victoria, the Jobs Victoria Employment Network aims to assist disadvantaged jobseekers, including refugees and migrants, into jobs in targeted industries.

Malcolm Turnbull told the United Nations general assembly in September: “Australia is one of the most successful multicultural societies in the world” with a “long experience of, and commitment to, settlement services to ensure our immigrants, especially refugees, become successfully integrated into our society”.

But the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, said during last year’s election campaignthat refugees were a burden on the Australian economy. “For many people, they won’t be, you know, numerate or literate in their own language, let alone English. These people would be taking Australian jobs, there’s no question about that.

“For many of them that would be unemployed, they would languish in unemployment queues and on Medicare and the rest of it so there would be huge cost and there’s no sense in sugar-coating that, that’s the scenario.”

However, long-term, refugee resettlement has been found to be immensely beneficial to Australia, both socially and economically.

A 2011 report by South Australian professor Graham Hugo, commissioned by the immigration department, found “the overwhelming picture, when one takes the longer term perspective of changes over the working lifetime of humanitarian program [refugee settlement] entrants and their children, is one of considerable achievement and contribution”.