3413.0 - Migrant Statistics News, Oct 2009  
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 15/10/2009   
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A NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR

Welcome to the latest newsletter from the National Migrant Statistics Unit (NMSU).

I'm delighted to advise that the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) and the Australian Bureau of Statistics announced that the NMSU would continue for a further three years, after the two Commonwealth agencies recently signed a memorandum of understanding to continue funding the unit.

Included in this edition of the unit's newsletter is advice about the Migrant Quality Study and the findings from the feasibility study of linking DIAC's Settlement Database to the Statistical Longitudinal Census Dataset. The results of this study were recently released in a research paper, Assessing the Quality of Linking Migrant Settlement Records to Census data (cat. no. 1351.0.55.027).

For users of Census data, the release of TableBuilder should prove to be a boon. This on-line tool allows users to create their own custom tables of Census data including person, family and dwelling classifications in the one table for all ABS geographic areas. More detail about TableBuilder is available in the newsletter.

Later this year the fourth edition in the series Perspectives on Migrants (cat. no. 3416.0) will be released. This series provides commentary about issues related to migrants and migration to Australia. The next edition contains two articles providing further insight into migrants' labour force experiences and conditions; one on job search experience, and the other on forms of employment. These articles, which explore differences in looking for work (including employment barriers) and the nature of the work that is found, respectively, across different migrant cohorts and in comparison to the Australian born population, add to the growing list of articles that are already available on the ABS website.

The ABS is progressively releasing historical demographic publications which provide information on population, vital statistics and migration information for Australia and the states and territories. These publications will be useful to all those interested in migrants and migration. In addition, the annual publication Migration, Australia 2007-08 (cat. no. 3412.0) was released on July 28, 2009 and includes information on net overseas migration, interstate migration and Australia's resident population by country of birth.

The ABS flagship social commentary publication, Australian Social Trends (cat. no. 4102.0) is now released quarterly. Some articles directly address issues related to migrants such as Australia's links to China and India, while others touch on the differences between the Australian born and overseas born components of the population.

As always, if you are interested in receiving further details about our work, we would be pleased to hear from you. NMSU contact details are listed in the Newsletter. In the meantime - happy reading!

Andrew Middleton
Acting Director
Culture, Recreation and Migrant Statistics