To the outside world, Brunei, the tiny Southeast Asian monarchy, looks like a Shangri-La. The country, with a population of less than half a million, has one of the highest levels of GDP per capita in the world. Its benevolent Sultan has ensured free healthcare and education and highly subsidized food and housing for his subjects.
There is no income tax. Brunei has the highest per capita car ownership in ASEAN – an average of two cars per household – and a high prevalence of foreign domestic workers, locally called “amah,” predominantly hailing from Indonesia and the Philippines.
Given this background, the news of educated Bruneians going to Australia to work illegally on agricultural farms as fruit-pickers was shocking for someone who has worked in Brunei for 10 years.
But a Reddit discussion on Brunei unemployment revealed that something is amiss in the Sultanate. Many unemployed people blamed foreign workers for taking their jobs in the private sector.
For some, the easiest way out was Australia. The Bruneian passport, ranked 19th in the world, opens visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 163 countries.
The Electronic Travel Authority (ETA) gives a three-month tourist visa for just A$20. Although it is illegal for ETA holders to work, and if caught, the visa can be cancelled, for some desperate Bruneians the risk is worth taking, as A$30-A$50 per hour looks pretty good even after taking travel, board, and lodging into consideration.
Although Australia has a program called the Working Holiday Maker (WHM) scheme, also called backpacker visa, which allows travelers to work during their stay to help finance their holiday, it comes with several caveats. There is generally a six-month limit on working for the same employer. More importantly, the scheme is available only to citizens of more than 40 partner countries and Brunei is not among them. This may explain why some Bruneians are using the ETA as a backdoor route to Australia in search of farm work.
How has the situation come to this pass? One cannot find obvious signs of poverty in Brunei, unlike in many Southeast Asian countries. I have never seen a Bruneian begging on the streets.
The problem is that educated youth are not finding employment in one of the richest countries in the world. It sounds paradoxical. Even more ironic is the fact that the hydrocarbon sector, which brought so much wealth to the country, is also contributing to unemployment. The Dutch Disease is at work in Brunei. When 90 percent of export revenues come from oil and gas, it can stunt the growth of other sectors such as agriculture, tourism, and industry.
A communications consultant, who asked not to be named, said: “The economy is just broken and is too skewed in one direction. Too much emphasis on the hydrocarbon sector has not only shrunk the job market but also made different clusters of the economy stagnant.” She added: “Outside of oil and gas, what do we have? What job opportunities are there?”
Brunei’s 2025 Labor Force Survey, published in July using the International Labor Organization reference population aged 15 and above, showed unemployment rising to 11,800 people, or 5.1 percent, from 4.8 percent in 2024. Brunei’s national headline measure, covering those aged 18 and above, was 5.0 percent.
Youth unemployment among those aged 15 to 24 stood at 18.4 percent. The gap by sex was stark: 15.3 percent for young men and 23.7 percent for young women. This means nearly one in four young women in the labor force who were seeking work did not find it.
Time-related underemployment rose from 15,600 to 19,500 people. These were workers who wanted additional hours, worked fewer than 40 hours, and were available for more work.
The important highlight of the survey is that median monthly income from employment fell from BN$1,000 in 2024 to BN$950 in 2025.
Siti Fatimahwati Pehin Dato Musa and Pg Dr Siti Rozaidah Pg Hj Idris of Universiti Brunei Darussalam, in their seminal 2022 work, “Addressing Issues of Unemployment in Brunei: The Mismatch Between Employers’ Expectations and Employees’ Aspirations,” wrote that the majority of young people seek prestigious jobs and that there seems to be a risk-averse attitude among them. Most young people aspire to jobs that are in the professional, managerial, or technical sectors.
This preference for secure jobs is also reflected in Brunei’s employment structure. The government is the biggest employer in Brunei, and it is the most sought-after avenue for any young Bruneian because of lifelong financial security.
The 2022 study found that the mindset of relying on government jobs was responsible for a lower preference for jobs in the private sector and other sectors. Another factor highlighted by the study was that most Bruneians are averse to manual work.
A social media consultant said that in the good old days, when oil was hitting more than $140 per barrel, everything was humming along. He said the only way out of the current economic trap is diversification. Brunei should learn from Gulf countries, which have reduced their dependence on the oil and gas sector. Even a country like Saudi Arabia has started diversifying its economy, he pointed out.
“The notion that Brunei is a utopia that is shielded from turbulent economic and natural forces no longer exists today,” he added.
Discussion of agricultural work in Australia has been doing the rounds on Brunei’s social media. Australia is entering its harvest season, when farmers face a perennial shortage of seasonal labor. WHM travelers are an important source of this workforce and can legally take jobs such as fruit picking. But Bruneians are not eligible for the WHM scheme, and working on an ETA remains illegal.
The Australian High Commission in Bandar Seri Begawan has a dedicated page on its website warning Bruneians against visa scams and making clear that an ETA does not permit them to work in Australia.
Although the Bruneian dollar is stronger than the Australian dollar because of Brunei’s currency interchangeability agreement with the Singapore dollar, for an unemployed young Bruneian A$30-A$50 an hour is worth taking risk. According to wage.is, the minimum wage in Brunei is BN$2.62/hr (A$2.88) as of 2026. The average gross monthly salary is BN$2,500 (A$2,752); the same amount could be earned in just about two weeks of fruit picking in Australia.
This is the reason why some of Brunei’s educated young people are now leaving home to do agricultural labor in Australia.
A teacher at Universiti Brunei Darussalam pointed out the paradox: “The reason why we have so many foreign workers doing manual jobs, even in the agriculture sector, is that many times we are told that Bruneians are averse to manual work. Here, a young Bruneian, leaving the comforts of home, is ready to go to Australia to do manual work on farms. I am not sure about the monetary benefit if you take into account air tickets, board, and lodging.”
Is it a case of the grass looking greener on the other side of the fence? Or are young Bruneians simply trying to make a quick buck while waiting for their chance in the long queue of the unemployed? It might be both.