They then export those engineers to the US and Europe and import people by the boat full who can't code their way out of a for loop with a map and compass.
Unfortunately, yeah, we were all removed from the workforce in a conventional sense almost immediately. I run my own business and most of our clients are American, my co-founder became an executive within four years, and the last guy went into private consulting for the mining industry.
I know of a local business with a great engineering culture, and they told me that they've run forty in-person interviews to fill a single slot in the past. And their team is really overloaded with Americans that immigrated to Australia for non-career reasons.
Which is ironic given how bad everything has gotten since the end of covid. From my circle of friends _everyone_ has left and I'm half way tempted to move to Switzerland to work for a competitor in the field who offer American salaries with European social services.