Australia is home to one of the largest temporary migrant workforces in the developed world with the OECD warning that high levels of immigration can hurt low-income communities even as it benefits the broader economy.
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In its annual overview of migration trends across the world, the Paris-based thinktank used a special study on temporary migration to highlight the large number of people who have the right to work in countries including Australia and the United States.
The Morrison government is reducing the permanent migration intake to 160,000 for the next four years while also seeking to direct migrants to regional parts of the country.
But the OECD's report, released on Wednesday, notes that permanent migration is just one part of total immigrant movements.
Australia had almost 750,000 permits for temporary migrants on issue in 2017, second in total number only to the US.
As a proportion of the overall population, Australia was also second behind New Zealand.
Measured in terms of their share of the local working population, Australia's army of international students is the largest in the world.
The OECD found in a single year, Australia's international students accounted for more than 0.4 per cent of the working population.
Only New Zealand had a higher proportion of working holidaymakers than Australia.
The OECD found if holidaymakers worked during their entire stay in Australia they would boost the total working population by 1.7 per cent.
Taking into account restrictions on temporary migrants, the OECD estimates this sector accounts for the equivalent of 200,350 full-time jobs or 1.6 per cent of Australia's workforce.
The OECD's employment, labour and social affairs director, Stefano Scarpetta, said it was vital governments understood that the benefits and costs of immigration were unevenly spread across a community.
Mr Scarpetta said low-skilled immigrants were often concentrated in disadvantaged urban areas and could pose challenges for "integration" into local communities.
"While the total flow of migrants is generally too small relative to the total workforce to affect native employment prospects and pay on average, high inflows of migrants into low-skilled jobs might damage the labour market prospects of young unskilled workers," he said.
"Recognising the uneven distributional impact of migration and then addressing its consequences is crucial.
"It is important to identify the winners and the losers, compensate the latter and adapt policies so that negative impacts are minimised."
The OECD report found most Australian migrants have employment prospects the same if not better than locally born workers.
The jobless rate among European migrants is 4 per cent, having fallen from 4.5 per cent in 2013, while their employment rate is 77.9 per cent.
The employment rate for Australian-born workers is 74.9 per cent.
Over the past five years, the jobless rate of all migrants has fallen to 5.2 per cent to sit below the 5.4 per cent of locally-born workers.
But parts of the migrant community is missing out on job opportunities, the report said.
Among North African and Middle East born migrants, the jobless rate is 10.7 per cent while the employment rate is just 50.9 per cent.
The jobless rate of people from sub-Sahara Africa has increased since 2013 to 6.9 per cent, the only group to see a lift in unemployment.
- SMH/The Age
