​​The Stats Guy: Where and how too few migrants will hurt us the most

Four million of our 12 million workers were born outside of Australia – that’s one in three workers. Image: Getty, TND

Which jobs and which sectors of the economy rely most on migrant workers? These jobs struggled when migration turned negative during the pandemic. Now these jobs benefit from rising migration numbers.

Let’s start with the basics. At the 2021 Census, the Australian workforce measured over 13 million people. Through Census data, we can clearly analyse 12 million of these jobs by type of industry, occupation, and country of birth of worker. That covers over 92 per cent of the workforce—a near-perfect dataset to play with.