Skills Shortages Bite in Western Australia
April 5th, 2006 | Published in Immigration
Western Australia’s economic growth fell dramatically last year as it struggled to find enough skilled workers to meet surging demand.
Growth fell from 8 percent in 2003-04, to just 3 percent in 2004-05 – when the skills shortage was at its height.
As the shortage hit businesses, wages and prices rose and business investment growth fell from 28 percent to 11 percent.
The Australian Statistics Bureau has highlight three main reasons for the skills shortage:
- The number of skilled workers available fell because of the rapid expansion of the state’s resources / mining sector. Many workers were drawn into mining where almost 10,000 jobs were created and filled. The scale of demand is illustrated by the fact that in a three-year period, Western Australia’s exports to China doubled.
- Strong property market activity triggered the demand for skilled workers in property, business services and construction. 19,200 extra jobs were created and filled in Western Australia’s property and business services sector and 12,900 jobs in the construction industry.
- Fewer skilled workers were available because of reduced participation in education and training (course enrolments fell by 8,900 people from May 2002 to May 2005). Other contributing factors include a slowing in population growth and an ageing of the labour force.
