The Great Australian Skills Shortage

The Great Australian Skills Shortage A LOOMING skills crisis will force Queensland to look to overseas migration to supply thousands of skilled workers.

The Great Australian Skills Shortage This shortage is the result of a booming mining industry and the imminent retirement of waves of baby boomers, and flies in the face of growing calls for migration caps.

The lack of skills has already led to an admission from the mining sector that some coal mines could be forced to close because of a lack of highly qualified safety officers who must be on site at all hours of operation.

It’s expected that more than 4.4 million workers will be needed nationally over the next 15 years simply to replace retiring baby boomers, while another 4.8 million workers will be needed to deal with the growth.

Huge amounts of money are being thrown at the problem, with a government-industry advisory body, Skills Queensland, getting a $100 million investment fund to find a solution.

A survey has said that Queensland should expect to be among the hardest hit by the ageing workforce in the next five years, with about a quarter of the state’s companies predicting a significant impact.

“Too many Australians do not have even the language, literacy and numeracy skills of a level sufficient to meet the demands of the modern economy,” AI Group’s outgoing president Don Matthews said.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said the Federal Government’s reforms delivered a sustainable level of immigration while responding to labour market needs.

Immigration has fallen significantly from its highs in 2008 of 253,400 people to about 180,000 this year and became a hot issue during the election campaign when Prime Minister Julia Gillard abandoned the “Big Australia” policy of her predecessor, Kevin Rudd, in favour of a more sustainable approach, while the Opposition promised big cuts to the intake.

“Policy reforms to the temporary skilled worker (457 visa) program have made this program genuinely responsive to labour market needs by ensuring that temporary overseas workers are paid at market rates and do not take jobs that could be done by Australian workers,” Mr Bowen said.

In the year to the end of May, Queensland’s net overseas migration was down by one-third. The survey found that Queensland business planned to rectify its skills shortage with immigration.

Engineers were the most highly sought with a predicted gap of 5000 by 2015. The Santos-led GLNG project said its focus would be on local training but there would be a mix of imported staff for its massive project in Gladstone.