Highly skilled locals more productive when teamed with migrants

The Productivity Commission found evidence that skilled migrants and highly skilled locals have complementary skills. (Image: Getty)

Jem Traylen

Mon, 25 Jul 2022

Productivity Commission researchers are applying the same methods used to estimate gender and ethnic pay gaps to explore how the relative productivity and wages of migrants differ from New Zealand-born workers and across different groups of migrants.When taken as a uniform group, migrant workers appear to produce slightly less than the average NZ-born worker but capture a larger share of the firm-level wage bill.However, when broken down by visa type and length of stay in NZ, the researchers discovered that migrants who had been in NZ for more...

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