Over the last seventy years, immigration has added seven million people to Australia’s population and will, if current policy settings continue, add a further thirteen million by 2060. The current focus of the migration program on skilled migration, while maintaining opportunities for family and humanitarian immigration, is perceived to have served Australia well. However, key...

As part of its work on analysing digital productivity, the Bureau of Communications Research (BCR) has released the first part of a leading project to understand how digitisation affects Australia’s productivity and the nation’s economy.

The paper is about the sources of growth in income in Australia and the effects of structural change on the distribution of income between labour and capital. The main objective is to find an explanation for the fall in the labour share of income in Australia in the 2000s. Key points The labour share of...

This paper examines the sources of the decline in Australia’s productivity growth since the record highs of the 1990s, focusing on the last two complete productivity cycles (ending in 2007-08). It offers a different perspective by looking for a general or macro-economic explanation and then tracing the origins to specific industries. It identifies quite specific...

This paper examines Australia's future productivity growth prospects and, specifically, whether it is feasible for Australia to match the performance benchmarks set by other countries now and in the foreseeable future. Key points • International comparisons of productivity at a national level are useful, but should be treated with care. Comparisons of productivity performance are...