The relative performance and characteristics of Australian firms that used the 457 temporary skilled visa program

Abstract

The now concluded sub-class 457 temporary skilled migrant visa program was used to provide Australian businesses with a means to address short-term skill shortages. Due to micro-data limitations there has been a lack of empirical research on the program. This paper circumvents this limitation by linking unpublished data from the Department of Home Affairs, which was previously the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) on 457 migrant sponsoring firms to financial information on these sponsoring firms from the Business Longitudinal Analysis Data Environment (BLADE). This allows for a more detailed characterisation of these firms and the identification of any performance differentials between sponsoring and non-sponsoring firms. The results reveal that relative to similar non-sponsoring firms, sponsors performed better, although it is unlikely that this performance differential was exclusively due to temporary skilled migrants.

JEL Codes: J44, J61, L25