Ryan Edwards, ANU - The labour market impacts of lower-skilled temporary migration: Evidence from the PALM scheme

Title: The labour market impacts of lower-skilled temporary migration: evidence from the PALM scheme

Abstract: : Does low-skilled immigration depress the wages of native workers, or reduce their employment prospects? We study the labour market impacts of low-skilled migration in Australia, offering the first evidence on the domestic impacts of the high-profile Pacific-Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme. The Seasonal Worker Program commenced in 2012, allowing Pacific Islanders to come and work in Australia, mostly in the agricultural sector but also in some other seasonal sectors, such as tourism. The Pacific Labour Scheme was introduced in 2019 offering longer-stay contracts, up to four years, and both together make up the PALM scheme today. Using administrative data from tax and visa records and a simple difference-in-difference design, we estimate the effects of the SWP on wages of Australian workers in exposed occupations. We find no evidence that the SWP suppressed wages of Australian workers in exposed occupations, but rather a small positive effect. Additionally, we find that workers in these exposed occupations are highly mobile, and that people who leave these jobs experience large wage gains.

With: Toan Nguyen, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Presenter: Ryan B Edwards, Development Policy Centre and Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

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