Rise in overseas workers

 AN analysis shows that from 2000 to 2012 more than 50,000 people arrived in Papua New Guinea for employment opportunities in areas like administration, executive and managerial.

The report by fellow Carmen Voigt-Graf at the Development Policy Centre in Australia indicated that most of these visitors where from Asia.

“The growing number of visitors from Philippines comes to PNG for employment purposes – a trend that is directly linked to the expanding economy. 

“Australians continue to dominate arrivals for business and holiday purposes.

“Most people who come to PNG do so to work, over the entire period from 2000 to 2012, visitors in the category of administration, executive, managerial was the largest occupational category followed by professional, and technical. 

“These are the two most highly skilled occupational categories growing at a rate between 2000 and 2012 of 203 per cent and 233 per cent respectively. 

“This indicates an ongoing shortage of highly skilled labour in PNG. 

“However, their combined share of working visitors is declining: from 88 per cent in 2000 to 80 per cent in 2007 and 71 per cent in 2012.

“Taking up a rapidly increasing share of working visitors is the visitor arrivals category of “tradespeople, mechanics, boiler men, etc”. (Tradespeople are referred to as tradesmen in the data released by the NSO.) This category, which became the third largest by 2012, accounted for 16,848 working visitors in 2012 or 15 per cent, up from only 925 or 3 per cent in 2000: a growth rate of 1721 per cent.

“This remarkable increase points to an increasing shortage of trades labour, associated with PNG’s expanding economy and especially its booming construction and mining sectors.

The fourth largest category in 2012 were “service workers”, which includes workers related to customer interaction, entertainment, sales or other service-oriented work: this category grew by 598 per cent.

The category of “transport and communication workers” grew most rapidly between 2000 and 2012 (2410 per cent), albeit from a low base, making it the fifth largest category in 2012. 

“The even more remarkable growth in this category is probably linked to increasing deregulation in the telecommunications industry in PNG.

“PNG’s growing economy has attracted an increasing number of both highly skilled and vocational and technical workers. The composition of the foreign workforce has changed significantly over the last decade. In 2000, nine out of ten visitors who came to PNG to work had a professional or managerial background. Now, it is only seven out of ten. 

“The sharp rise in the share of blue collar workers – from 3 per cent to 15 per cent of working visitor arrivals between 2000 and 2012 – among the expatriate workforce is linked to recent patterns of economic development in the country and reflects the growth of both extractive industries and the construction sector.