‘Getting staff is a nightmare’: Where Sydney’s worker drought is biting hardest | MattWadeSMH
When Kerrie Sheaves, chair of the Sydney Hills Business Chamber, addressed a room full of business people on Wednesday evening, she put a question to the crowd.A unanimous “Yes,” was the noisy reply from the 70 people gathered at a Dural restaurant.mingled at the networking event, most attending had a story about how a shortage of workers was affecting their business.
Parts of Sydney’s south-west, hard hit by last year’s stringent COVID-19 lockdowns, have higher unemployment rates than the rest of Sydney. But even there, employment indicators have improved considerably during the past year.Sheaves says the scarcity of labour is affecting businesses of every size and in every sector in her district.“It’s the No. 1 problem we have,” she says.
“The population shortfall is concentrated among people under 35,” he says. “The reason for that is simply because immigration tends to be heavily concentrated in that age group. This has made recruitment particularly difficult for those industries that rely primarily on younger talent, such as accommodation and food services and retail trade.
The difficulties recruiting and retaining staff, along with rising inflation and higher interest rates, are taking a toll on business sentiment. One measure showsThe worker shortage is affecting many aspects of city life.snaking out of Sydney airport terminals earlier this month were one high-profile example. The airport’s chief executive, Geoff Culbert, warned last week the recovery in airline passenger numbers “continues to track ahead of the workforce recovery”.
Yesh Mudaliar, managing director of Holiday Inn Parramatta, says rooms sometimes cannot be cleaned to accommodate demand because of a lack of housekeeping staff. On occasions, members of hotel management have helped clean rooms and serve food and beverages. Scott wants to expand his small plumbing firm but says it has been hard to find the appropriate people: “Trying to get materials is a joke and trying to get staff is a nightmare.”report found Australia was second only to Canada in having the most severe labour shortages in the developed world.
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