Hold skilled migration until SA economy improves

When migrants research Adelaide, they find PR puff pieces on happy people drinking wine in the hills and dogs and children romping along a beach. The truth about the state's most serious economic problems since the 1930s is buried by media spin.

Two cycles are running through the SA economy. There's the short-term economic cycle of falling mineral prices and tight retail spending. These come and go. But there is a far more serious structural mechanism at work. This is the stagnation and decline of the old manufacturing and construction economy with its allied professions and supply chains. This 'unwinding' of the old economy has far-reaching effects and it's hitting the poor hardest.

In a regressively deductive economic climate, migrants must not only battle a contracting economy, but also fight age prejudice, race prejudice, cronyism and nepotism in our recruitment industries. There are some jobs but they aren't in the traditional blue-collar industries in the northern and western suburbs, where migrants predominantly settle. They're in health and aged care.

The ABS define being employed as working one hour a week. This is a dangerous sham. Few labour market specialists believe that SA's unemployment rate is 6.9 per cent (trend) and that youth unemployment is 14.6 per cent. The real rate is closer to 12 per cent (trend) and rising. Real youth unemployment in Adelaide is above 30 per cent. Many people have stopped looking for a job and therefore don't show up on the monthly unemployment statistics.

Much of the job readiness training for migrants in Adelaide is useless, with limited vocational application. There are no measures to determine whether migrants actually get work after the training, or if they do, how long they stay employed. Migrants are paying thousands of dollars to undertake courses that play no intrinsic role in helping them find career specific jobs. As for older job seekers (migrant or non-migrant), they have been cast on scrap heap and will also join a growing disaffected precariat.

We are also seeing the rise of right wing and anti-Islamist groups such as the Patriots Defence League, who opposed a mosque planned in Greenfields. Other groups attacked the Fleurieu Milk Company and Vili's for pursuing Halal certification. Right wing and anti-migrant organisations gather like vultures around states that are doing it tough.

The state is entering a phase of mass unemployment. Stop state-nominated migration now for five years and get new migrants jobs.