Immigration and Wage Growth: The Case of Australia

Courtney Brell () and Christian Dustmann

RBA Annual Conference Papers from Reserve Bank of Australia

Abstract: We discuss various ways in which an economy can adjust to immigration-induced labour supply shocks, and what the implications are for wages. We then describe the empirical approaches that aim at quantifying the wage effects of immigration, and point out the challenges for empirical work. Turning to Australia, we review the status of Australia's immigration program and migrant population, as well as recent developments in the labour market outcomes of Australian residents. We survey existing empirical evidence analysing the links between immigration and wages in Australia, which, while sparse, does not generally support adverse impacts on average wages or wages of low-skilled Australians. Finally, we discuss this Australian experience in the context of the adjustment mechanisms reviewed earlier and consider the implications of these findings.

Keywords: wages; immigration; literature review; Australian migration; skill-cell; spatial analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-04, Revised 2019-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig
Note: Paper presented at the RBA's annual conference 'Low Wage Growth', Sydney, 4–5 April 2019.
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/confs/2019/pdf ... 9-brell-dustmann.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rba:rbaacp:acp2019-05

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in RBA Annual Conference Papers from Reserve Bank of Australia Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Paula Drew ().