Survey- Migrants face multiple barriers to finding work

A lack of local work experience and a foreign sounding name are among the barriers new arrivals to Australia face in finding work here, a new survey has found.

Visitors of Afghan nationality wearing hijabs are seen outside Parliament House in Canberra, Thursday, Oct. 02, 2014. Source: AAP

It also found that migrants felt excluded by recruitment processes and that a majority of job seekers would take any job offered to them. The survey, carried out by migrant and refugee settlement agency AMES Australia canvased 357 migrant and refugee job seekers at Hume and Dandenong, in Melbourne, and at Auburn and Bankstown, in Sydneys west, during July and August 2017. The areas surveyed have adult unemployment rates of around 7.2 percent - significantly higher than the national adult jobless rate of 5.6 -, and all have high populations of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) people. The jobseekers surveyed came from 29 countries, and more than 60 percent came from just six countries: China, India, Vietnam, Syria, Afghanistan, and Lebanon. Obaidullah Mehak has more; please listen to the full interview here.