In Australia, immigrants from English-speaking countries are more likely to be chief executives than migrants from other countries? This is not alarmist.
Whether you can reach the top of the Australian workplace ladder is linked to where you were born, a study has found.
The University of Macquarie's (Macquarie University) School of Business and economics, which collected and analyzed data from the 2011 Australian census, found that while Australia's workforce was "highly diversified" to international standards, it was in the top management positions. This is not the case.
McCurry University found that if you were born in English-speaking countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and South Africa, people are more likely to reach the top of the workplace.
At the same time, the number of immigrants from the Philippines, Vietnam, India and China is very low at the top of Australian companies.
Of course, Australian-born people still hold the majority of top corporate positions, with data showing that 70% of Australian companies' chief executives and executive directors are born in Australia. But that is slightly lower than the share of Australian births in the workforce as a whole.
By contrast, 8.1 percent of Australia's chief executives and managing directors were born in the UK, twice as much as the UK-born population, at 4.9 percent of the Australian workforce.
But it's not that immigrants come from English-speaking countries, he has a better say at the top of the workforce, even though proficiency in language does seem to be crucial.
"We also found that immigrants from countries with higher proficiency in English, such as Germany and the Netherlands, accounted for a relatively high proportion of CEOs and M.Ds." Says Dr. Nick Parr of Macquarie University.
It is worth noting that although the proportion of immigrants from Asian countries is low at the top, South Koreans and Japanese are an exception, Dr. Nick Parr said, possibly because of Australia's skilled migration program. The reason why foreign businessmen are allowed to open stores in Australia.
Immigrants born in English-speaking countries accounted for 16.7 per cent of chief executives and general managers, compared with 10.2 per cent of all employed people, while immigrants from non-English-speaking countries accounted for the opposite (13.2 per cent at senior levels). (16.8% of the labour force).
When it comes to second-generation immigrants, the study found that despite the high unemployment rate in the 1980s, descendants of Greece and Lebanon were largely in senior positions in Australia.
Dr Nick Parr said: "many immigrants from southern Europe in the 1950s and 1960s were employed by manufacturing companies, most of whom were chief executives and medical doctors."
The researchers say the findings may be due to discriminatory and differentiated treatment of different groups in appointments and promotions. The new study follows data released in 2018 by the Australian human rights Council, which shows that people from UK or European backgrounds make up 95 percent of Australian executives and 97 percent of CEO.
The study also found that there was a very large gender-to-gender gap in senior management. In Australia, only 19.3% of the nearly 50000 CEO and general managers are women.