SYDNEY, Jan 4 (NNN-AGENCIES) – About four in 10 Australian businesses are experiencing significant impacts from labour shortages, according to a new research by one of the nation’s leading banks.
The Business Insight Report, released by the National Australia Bank (NAB) today, was based on responses from about 1,600 businesses, across a broad range of industries, from mid-Nov to mid-Dec, last year.
NAB chief executive officer, Ross McEwan said, bringing talent into Australia would be the key to alleviating the employment situation.
“Australian businesses are facing significant skilled and unskilled labour shortages. Almost every employer I talk to, from cafes, tourism, agriculture, and manufacturing, is saying ‘we can’t get workers’,” McEwan said.
“To get the economy really firing, we will need to bring people into Australia and make sure, as a nation, we’re building a skilled workforce for the future,” he said.
The report said, 38 percent of medium-sized businesses and 37 percent of larger firms viewed labour shortages as being a “very significant issue,” compared with 31 percent of small businesses.
Lacking trade workers (35 percent) and professionals (32 percent) are the most common types of the labour shortage, according to about one in three Australian firms.
By state, Western Australia (WA) had the most pressing need for workers with 44 percent of businesses saying labour shortages had made a very significant impact over the past three months. At the other end of the scale, only 24 percent of businesses in the island state of Tasmania reported such a problem.
WA also leads in expectations of labour shortages over the next 12 months (43 percent), followed by New South Wales, Queensland, and the Australian Capital Territory (all 39 percent), South Australia and Northern Territory (36 percent) and Tasmania (20 percent).
McEwan said that, data scientists, digital experts and technology skills were in high demand, right across the economy in Australia.
“At NAB, we’re doing a lot of work to retrain and invest in our workforce and we now have more than 2,000 colleagues, who are certified cloud-computing practitioners,” he added.– NNN-AGENCIES
