Survey reveals one third of companies say skill shortages will hurt operations in 2010 – here are the hardest rolls to fill

Australia’s economy might still be in recovery mode, but a new survey shows that skills shortages are already hurting businesses and are likely to worsen in the next five years, with engineers, business managers, administration staff and accountants already difficult to find.

The survey of 400 businesses was conducted by the Australian Industry Group and accounting firm Deloitte and found 34.7% of respondents believe there is a high to extreme risk that skill shortages will hurt their operations this year, while 47.5% believe there is a high to extreme risk over the next five years.

Three quarters of companies said they have filled or tried to fill positions in the last six months, with two thirds facing difficulties and over a quarter saying they could not find workers at all.

With more than half of all companies planning to increase staff numbers over the coming 12 months – 53.6% of these are doing so to support expansion plans – the skills shortage is likely to get much worse very quickly.

AIG chief executive Heather Ridout, says that while skills shortages never completely disappeared during the GFC, the fact the problem is growing so quickly represents a big threat to economic growth.

“While companies learnt painful lessons from past downturns and hoarded their skilled staff, the magnitude of the problem today requires new strategies and renewed effort at a whole new level,” she says.

“Of particular concern is that shortages are intensifying in occupations associated with manufacturing, construction and engineering, which are pivotal to the Australian economy. These occupations are based on skills which have a long development lead time, are in high use across the economy and whose absence puts industry at high risk.”

While the AIG survey is slightly skewed by the participation of a high number of manufacturing businesses, the list of jobs with the high vacancy levels shows the problem is broad.

The jobs with the biggest skills shortages were:

• Metal fitters and machinists (59.6% of all vacancies were unfilled)
• Engineering professionals (51.7% unfilled)
• Metal casting, forging and finishing workers (36.7% unfilled)
• Structural steel and welding workers (32.9% unfilled)
• Business administration managers workers (36.7% unfilled)
• Sales people (39.8% unfilled)
• Clerical and administration staff (23.5% unfilled)

The survey found that nearly half of respondents (46.8%) are making managing skills shortages a high priority and are working on strategies to counter the skills crisis.

Common measures include better in-house training of employees, developing a plan to multi-skill by training existing workers and considering wage increases to retain skilled workers.