South West business still struggling to find staff in regional skills shortage

A crippling staff shortage is continuing to take its toll on South West businesses, as cafes, restaurants and entertainment venues are being forced to reduce opening hours or close completely as they scramble to urgently fill vacancies. Help-wanted signs line the shop windows along the major shopping centres and cafe strips throughout the region, part of a national trend that saw regional job vacancies growing to an all-time high in May. The latest data shows WA’s job vacancy rate has more than doubled since pre-pandemic levels, the biggest gaps in the construction, retail, hospitality and health sectors. The Regional Australia Institute’s latest report showed regional job vacancies grew again to reach a new high of 86,050 advertised jobs in May. Industry experts said the problem existed long before COVID-19, but it had been exacerbated by the pandemic. Popular Bunbury cafe Melo Velo closed its doors from Wednesday because of a lack of available staff, and will only reopen on Saturday for weekend trading. The café’s new manager, Michelle Linfield, said staff shortages has also forced the cafe to reduce its trading hours from 6am-5.30pm to 6am-2pm. “Obviously, when someone gets sick, it definitely puts a lot of pressure on (other staff),” she said. She said finding staff willing to do the job had become more difficult for all businesses. “I think it has been quite a hard thing to find staff that are really willing and happy to work,” she said. “I think everyone is struggling to find staff.” On Wednesday, employment website Seek had 1219 job announcements for Bunbury and South West WA, 779 of these were for full-time jobs. Breaking these figures down, 83 full-time jobs were available in manufacturing and logistics, 74 for health and medical roles, 69 total full-time jobs across retail and sales, 63 for full-time hospitality positions. But it’s not as simple as blaming the skills drain on the mining sector — over the same period, 75 full-time jobs were listed for the mining, resources and energy sector in the region. The Australian Bureau of Statistics employment statistics from May shows WA’s job vacancy rate across all has increased by 136.2 per cent compared with pre-pandemic levels. The State’s job vacancy rate showed 28.3 per cent of businesses reporting at least once job vacancy, up 6.8 per cent from the February quarter. The sectors facing the highest number of vacancies nationally are administration, hospitality and tourism, utility services and construction. Bunbury Geographe Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive officer Kristy Gillian said business were facing staff shortages “across the board”, though the huge numbers of construction vacancies in the region were to be expected. “As you would expect with a large pipeline of construction projects, infrastructure, commercial and residential based, there are shortages in tradespeople across the board,” Ms Gillian said. “This has also impacted on the supply chain in the region with shortages in truck drivers for freight and logistics.” Ms Gillian said there were significant shortages across health care, aged care, child care and disability services, but also across retail and hospitality industries. “With the warmer weather approaching and the backpackers starting to come back we should see a migration of these new backpackers as they travel down the coast to follow the tourist trade,” she said. “This will have a positive impact on the hospitality, tourism and horticulture and agricultural industries. But there are still gaps.” Ms Gillian and the BGCCI worked alongside the Shire of Dardanup and the Federal Government to create the South West Designated Area Migration Agreement zone, aimed at providing skilled migrants with visa pathways to work in industries with ongoing skills shortages. At the time the DAMA deal was inked in November, key industries including agriculture, horticulture, engineering, health care, aged care and hospitality had been identified as sectors with long-term labour shortages. Nationally, there were 74,000 job vacancies in regional Australia. By May, this figure had risen to 86,050, according to the Regional Australia Institute’s latest report. The South West DAMA will only grant 200 visas each year to fill these shortages. Ms Gillian said both employees and employers had a role to play in filling the remaining vacancies. “The challenge with such low unemployment rates is that our latent unemployed workforce may not have the skills and experience that many businesses are expecting candidates to come equipped with,” she said. “Businesses need to think differently about their recruitment strategies and work with these candidates to provide more tailored support both during the recruitment process but also getting them trained and developed in the role.” She said this was difficult for business owners already stretched to capacity. “It comes down to whether it is better to invest in someone who will take more time, training and support to get to the level of capability the role requires, or have no one in that role at all,” she said. “With bigger salaries, greater perks and better conditions being the draw card for recruitment, many businesses are losing great staff simply because they can’t compete.”