DIAC confirms industry’s worst fears as WHM visa grants suffer dramatic fall
The Department of Immigration and Citizenship has confirmed the industry’s worst-kept secret – Working Holiday Maker (WHM) visa grants are suffering a dramatic decline year-on-year.
Figures for the first 10 months of the 2009/10 financial year seen by Thumbrella show there has been a drop in both WHM subclasses, particularly working holiday visas, with a total of 155,720 visas granted to April 30 2010. This represents a decrease of 6.75 per cent compared to the same period of 2008/09.
A departmental spokesman blamed the downturn on the global economic slowdown and the sustained strength of the Australian dollar. However, he added the decline is patchy and there are some nationality caseloads which continue to grow.
The WHM program consists of two visa subclasses, the working holiday visa (subclass 417) and the work and holiday visa (subclass 462). The program has more than doubled in the past decade with 194,103 WHM visas granted in 2008/09, an increase of 23 per cent on the previous year.
By Martin Lane · June 8th, 2010 at 11:21 am
Comments
15 Jun 10
4:08 pm
While the drop seems dramatic it depends on Nationality.
One would need to see the split before jumping off the cliff.
15 Jun 10
4:36 pm
Agree with Gregor. Which nationalities?
Was the spike in arrivals from Ireland due to their economic collapse? And is this one of the nationalities?
Is the French market still on the rise?
Are the brits still flatlining?
Lets see the stats in full.
15 Jun 10
5:06 pm
Let’s see some stats before adding to the doom and gloom. We have certainly seen a smaller increase this year – but last year was exceptional because there were no jobs in their home countries. France and Italy are still on the increase.
If you add on the number of second WHV’s I am sure we have more backpackers wandering around than ever before.
What we have to do is to get the message out that there ARE plenty of jobs in rural areas. Beaches Travel, Palace Backpackers and Visitoz in Queensland all reported hundreds of unfilled rural vacancies at the BQ meeting in Cairns last week.
If every hostellier would tell their job searching clients where to look not only would the backpackers be happy but they would return to say thank-you (and spend more money there) because of the favour done.
Certainly fruit picking vacancies are hard to find because students are taking these jobs through the labour hire gangs – but go out to an outback pub, stick picking crew or get some agricultural training and work on a cattle station and money would be saved very fast indeed as there is nothing to spend it on.
Once the good news story of plenty of jobs in the bush gets to the UK papers – in addition to good fun on Magnetic Island – the young Brits will show a very quick increase in numbers.
15 Jun 10
5:29 pm
@Mike Barrow: I don’t know about the WHM’s, but I think the Brit football fans might be flatlining after the weekends appalling performance.
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