Australian manufacturing workers are particularly competitive in the medical technology and aerospace sectors, according to the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Sector, and have a significant labour cost advantage over similarly-skilled workers in the United States.
“Against common belief, when it comes to high-skilled labour, we actually have an advantage,” the managing director of the AMGC, Jens Goennemann, told The Australian Financial Review.
According to Goennemann’s group, which delivered its Sector Competitiveness Plan to the federal government last week, skilled workers in these sectors were 38 to 40 per cent cheaper to hire than those in the US.
Australia has several high-profile success stories in aerospace and medical technology, such as Resmed, Cochlear, Marand and Quickstep.
The AMGC’s Sector Competitiveness Plan examined three areas of competitiveness for Australian businesses, centred around cost, performance difference and value, and market focus.