Three ways to tackle skills shortage

By Mark Eggleton

AT a mining conference in Western Australia last month, Australian Mines and Metals Association boss Steve Knott warned that the skills shortage in the mining industry is moving to a critical stage.

In a wide-ranging speech, Mr Knott recommended the triple combination of allowing more miners to access enterprise migration agreements, increasing critical skills training for Australians and targeting more women for resource industry jobs as part of the effort to alleviate the skills shortage in the industry.

He suggested the shortage needed to be addressed immediately, and referred to a startling 86 per cent of AMMA members, surveyed in mid-May on future workforce requirements, who indicated they are experiencing a critical skills shortage.

As to the present state of the industry, Knott said there were 94 resource projects at an advanced stage of development – either committed or under construction – representing record capital expenditure of $173.5 billion.

He said while shortages have traditionally existed for professional occupations, and demand for those roles continues to be the highest among all the occupational groups, demand for tradespersons and semi-skilled workers now also exceeds supply.

According to recent Australian Bureau of Statistics labour force figures, 205,800 people are employed in the sector and each extra job in the resource industry is said to be responsible for a further one to three jobs in other industries, with the knock-on employment effect being higher in regional centres.

By 2015, based on increased production driven mainly by demand from Asia, the resource industry is expected to employ at least 250,000 people directly and up to a further 750,000 indirectly.

“This means the industry will need to find another 40,000 people to employ in the next four years, a feat made even more challenging by the fact that Australia has a comparatively low and steady national unemployment rate of 4.9 per cent,” Mr Knott said.

“Employment growth in the mining industry has far outstripped growth in other industries such as manufacturing, construction and agriculture over the past 10 years, with the mining industry experiencing a growth rate of 17 per cent in February compared with 12 months earlier.”

He said accessing skilled and semi-skilled labour from overseas is a necessary adjunct to training Australian workers and sourcing workers locally.

“Unfortunately, this is not always a quick and easy process for businesses that have urgent projects to get off the ground, and skilled migration is unfortunately often opposed outright by trade unions.”

“Other factors exacerbating the skills shortage include an extremely low completion rate by apprentices in the construction trades and a historically low but growing proportion of women in the industry.”

“All these factors pose real challenges for employers in terms of their ability to source adequate labour, but even more so for policy-makers, given that the Australian economy relies so heavily on demand for our natural resources.”

Mark Eggleton, The Australian, July 2011