Emigration oppurtunities

hays has jobs or so they say…

Civil / Architectural CAD Technicians required €10 – 12.50 per hour, 6 month contract, Dublin City

80 billion in bank fees!

Countries such as Liyba etc. are quite busy at present, money is good & tax free but not very pleasant place to live!

I have seen a few threads regarding this issue but I can’t recall any feedback from anyone living and working as an architect in Australia, so for what it’s worth, the following is currently the case in Sydney:
1. In the Sydney area prior to the Christmas ’08 break a large number of firms let go of quite a few architects. Firms were halved as developers pulled out of any projects that they could contractually afford to do so and the inflow of new projects dried up. The financial sector also laid off huge numbers at christmas with alot of the investment banks etc letting go of huge numbers of people.
2. All colleagues that were let go could not pick up any work in Sydney. Most are still unemployed except for one particular person I know who managed to get a trial period with an office in Canberra.
3. Architectural offices will not sponsor people for either E-457 visas or Residency anymore as with E-457s they are obliged to cover the cost of flights back to Ireland if they cannot find employment (within one month) if they ever had to let them go.
4. Due to the strength of exports etc (sim. to Canada), and the fact that there was no property bubble here, Australia has been in a relatively better economic position than most countries (obviously better than Ireland) up until now but now it’s getting ready for recession and unemployment (mainly in the manufacturing sector so far) is rising dramatically and it is starting to creep into white collar as well.

I have been asked inumerable times in the last few months whether emigration to Sydney is a good option. In short I would say no, its not a good emigration option. If emigration is defined as going to live somewhere with better employment prospects than where you are now, then no, architects are struggling to get employment here at the moment.

However I can’t speak for any other parts of oz so maybe you’ll get more positive feedback from Perth, Brisbane or Melbourne architects.