The scale of the problem
SINCE 2018, approximately 114,000 Fijians – nearly 12 per cent of our entire population – have left the country. That’s equivalent to losing every resident of Lautoka and Nadi combined. Deputy Prime Minister Professor Biman Prasad has recently acknowledged to Parliament that this represents a significant brain drain, with many seeking better jobs, education and opportunities abroad.
Our total labour force has shrunk by over 65,000 people in just over a decade. Meanwhile, the number of people who’ve simply withdrawn from the workforce entirely has jumped from 247,000 to nearly 300,000. These aren’t retirees or full-time students – these are working-age Fijians who’ve stopped participating in our economy altogether.
Youth unemployment remains stubbornly above 18 per cent, showing no improvement despite record labour exports supposedly targeting the unemployed. If these schemes were working as intended, wouldn’t we see unemployment dropping rather than rising?
Real business impact
This isn’t abstract economic theory. A local manufacturing company recently reported to shareholders that it had shifted from profit to loss, attributing the decline partly to mass migration which had “diluted their customer base.” The company noted ongoing challenges with both skill levels and productivity, observing that “while costs are rising, productivity and efficiency are trending downward, creating additional pressure on margins”.
This pattern repeats across every sector. Employers consistently report they simply cannot find workers – not skilled workers, not unskilled workers, not anyone. The shortage has created what might be called a “poaching economy” where businesses compete for scarce labour by offering increasingly higher salary packages to lure employees from competitors.
This internal bidding war drives labour costs up sharply. Those increased costs flow through to prices for goods and services. Consumers pay more. Businesses become less competitive. Some shift from profit to loss.
Then there’s the foreign worker option. Companies forced to import replacement labour face premium wages, work permit costs, and administrative burdens. Either way, the cost of doing business escalates dramatically. This creates inflationary pressure across the entire economy.
The policy contradiction
Current policy restricts overseas labour scheme eligibility to “unemployed” Fijians with no source of income. On the surface, this seems sensible – export surplus labour while protecting existing jobs. The problem lies in who qualifies as “unemployed.” New graduates, trade school completers, young people entering the workforce for their first job – all are technically unemployed. These are precisely the people who should be starting careers here, developing skills in our economy, contributing to our productivity growth.
Instead, we’re actively facilitating their departure to build careers in Australia or New Zealand. We’re exporting our future before it can contribute domestically.
Meanwhile, what about those who remain “unemployed”? The tourism industry has reported that young, educated people are increasingly choosing not to work. Why? Because household income from remittances makes local employment optional rather than necessary.
When relatives overseas send enough money to cover living expenses, the motivation to take available local jobs diminishes. Standard unemployment definitions don’t capture this reality – someone supported by remittances who isn’t seeking work isn’t counted as “unemployed” by international measures, but they’re also not contributing to our economy.
So we’re exporting our most motivated job seekers – those willing to relocate internationally for work – while fostering remittance dependency among those who remain. This dual dynamic explains why unemployment persists despite massive labour export.
Lost returns on public investment
Fiji provides substantial public investment in education: free tuition, free transportation, scholarships and various other assistance programs. Taxpayers fund education from primary and secondary schools through to technical and vocational training.
Then we actively facilitate these educated workers leaving for Australia or New Zealand, where they pay taxes, contribute to productivity, develop new skills, and build someone else’s economy. We get remittances in return. Maybe. For a while.
Think about the economics of this exchange. Every dollar invested in educating someone who then works overseas represents a loss to Fiji’s economy. That worker’s lifetime tax contributions, their innovation, their skills development, and their economic multiplier effects – all accrue to the destination country.
We’re essentially subsidising workforce development for developed nations while foregoing returns on our own educational investments. No successful country operates this way.
The remittance sustainability question
Here’s the inconvenient truth about remittances: they always decline over time. Historical patterns across multiple countries show first-generation migrants send more money home than subsequent generations. Children born in Australia or New Zealand naturally have weaker connections to Fiji. They identify with their birth country. They see their future there, not here.
While remittances provide valuable short-term household relief, current levels are not sustainable long-term. What happens when flows decline – as they inevitably will – but we’ve lost an entire generation of domestic skills development? We’ll face a hollowed-out economy with limited productive capacity and no workforce to rebuild it. Policies built primarily on labour export are built on shifting sand.
The bigger demographic picture
Beyond immediate workforce concerns, Fiji faces broader demographic challenges. Recent data shows our population growth rate plummeting – from 0.8 per cent in the mid-2010s to projected around 0.22 per cent by 2035. Our fertility rate has dropped from about four births per woman in the 1980s to approximately 2.3 today – a nearly 50 per cent decrease over four decades.
Combined with mass emigration, we’re looking at a shrinking, aging population with declining workforce participation. This creates a downward economic spiral: fewer workers means less tax revenue, which means reduced government services and infrastructure investment, which makes Fiji less attractive, which accelerates emigration further. Once this spiral begins, it becomes increasingly difficult to reverse.
The fiscal impact nobody’s calculating
Has anyone in government calculated the net fiscal impact of these policies?
We celebrate remittance inflows while ignoring significant costs:
• Lost PAYE collections from 65,000 fewer workers
• Reduced corporate tax revenue from struggling businesses
• Decreased VAT revenue from reduced economic activity
• Higher costs of doing business creating inflationary pressures
• Cost of processing work permits for foreign replacement workers
• Premium wages required to attract those foreign workers
Even a rough calculation suggests fiscal losses may well exceed remittance gains. But we’re not having that conversation. The politics of remittances – visible money flowing in – overshadows the less visible but substantial costs.
A sovereign economic choice
This is not a critique of Australia or New Zealand. Their labour mobility schemes serve legitimate workforce needs, and they’re acting in their national interests. They’ve designed effective programmes to address their labour shortages. Good policy from their perspective.
But as a sovereign nation, Fiji must independently assess whether maximum participation in these schemes serves our long-term development interests. Every nation faces this balance between international engagement and domestic development priorities. Singapore jealously guards its human capital, restricting which skills can be exported. Malaysia offers incentives for overseas citizens to return and invest. Even our Pacific neighbours – Tonga and Samoa – implement more selective policies about which professions they’ll allow to participate in labour schemes.
We seem to be doing the opposite. We’re facilitating maximum participation with minimal restrictions, actively encouraging our most capable workers to build other countries’ economies whilst our own employers struggle with acute shortages. When barely half our working-age population is economically active, when businesses report losses directly attributed to labour shortages, when our population is shrinking – shouldn’t we be questioning whether current policy settings serve Fiji’s interests?
The alternative: Building economic capacity
The fundamental solution isn’t simply restricting labour export—it’s expanding our economic base to create genuine opportunities at home. If we want young Fijians to stay, we need to give them compelling reasons to do so.
This means government must prioritise economic diversification and expansion. We cannot continue relying primarily on tourism, remittances, and traditional sectors. We need to develop new industries, support emerging sectors, and create an environment where businesses can grow and employ people at competitive wages.
Economic expansion creates employment opportunities. When graduates and job seekers see viable career pathways locally, the pull of overseas work diminishes. When businesses can access the workers they need, they can grow, invest, and create more opportunities. This becomes a virtuous cycle rather than the current downward spiral.
What needs to change
We need more selective export policies. Identify critical skills essential for domestic development and protect them. If we face acute shortages in construction trades, teaching, healthcare, hospitality, engineering – these should be ineligible for export schemes until domestic needs are met.
Create “essential worker” categories. Review quarterly which sectors face shortages. Adjust eligibility accordingly. This isn’t preventing people from seeking opportunities – it’s ensuring we don’t export skills we desperately need.
We need to compete for our own workers. Why should local employment always lose to overseas opportunities? Tax incentives for businesses that train and employ local workers. Infrastructure investment to reduce operating costs. Streamlined approvals and reduced red tape. Make it economically viable to employ Fijians in Fiji.
We need to address remittance dependency. Consider graduated workforce participation requirements for working-age household members receiving substantial remittance support. Channel remittances toward productive investment rather than purely consumption spending. Investment matching programmes. Financial literacy initiatives. Make remittances strengthen our economy, not weaken it.
And frankly, we need to capture returns on education investment. If taxpayers fund someone’s training, some obligation to contribute to Fiji’s economy for a defined period before emigrating seems reasonable. This is standard practice in many countries.
The bottom line
After 14 years of aggressive labour export, the results are clear:
• Workforce participation: collapsed from approximately 64.9% to around 51.2%
• Unemployment: risen from 5.5% to 5.7%
• Youth unemployment: stuck above 18%
• Total departures: 114,000 people in six years
• Business impact: companies reporting losses from labour shortages
By what measure is this policy succeeding?
The real question is straightforward: Are we building Fiji’s economy or someone else’s? Because right now, the evidence suggests we’re subsidising workforce development for Australia and New Zealand whilst our own economy struggles with acute labour shortages, declining productivity, and rising costs.
This is about Fiji’s sovereign right to prioritise policies that protect our employers, support our businesses, and advance our long-term development. No successful nation exports its way to prosperity by sending its human capital abroad.
Our businesses deserve government policies that support domestic growth, not facilitate workforce depletion. Our young people deserve opportunities at home, not just pathways abroad. Our economy deserves better than becoming a labour supplier for developed nations. The data is published. The trends are clear. The question is whether we have the political will to change course before the damage becomes irreversible.
Remittances provide short-term household relief—nobody disputes that. But when they come at the cost of long-term economic capacity, we need to ask if the trade-off serves our national interest. It’s time for serious policy recalibration. Protect critical domestic skills. Make local employment competitive. Address remittance dependency. Capture returns on our education investment. Build our economy, not someone else’s.
The choice is ours. But the window for action is closing.
