An unexpected fall in the unemployment rate leaves the nation still facing a costly skills crisis, heightening the pressure for business and governments to efficiently respond.
Recently released figures from recruitment specialist, Clarius Group, showed the unemployment rate fell to a five-month low of 4.1% in August, just shy of the 34-year low of 3.9% set in February.
Managing director and CEO of Clarius Group, Diana Eilert, said the data confirms that Australia faces continued serious skills shortages.
"Policy makers across government and key business sectors should increase efforts to encourage highly-skilled expats back in to the Australian workforce,'' she suggested.
Ms Eilert said the skills issue - the lack of keen and able workers - was costing companies hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity because of the unavailability of home-grown specialist skills compounded by a lack of skilled migrants.
"Our research shows that productivity is being lost as businesses are waiting longer to fill vacancies and the efficiency of job matching is reduced, larger wage increases are being offered in order to attract potential employees and so the difficulty of fulfilling customer requirements is leading to steady losses in revenue,'' she said.
Four of the key sectors hit by the skills shortage are:
- IT
- health
- construction
- engineering
"Managements are also going to have be alert and prepared to change their expectations and employment strategies as well as their internal efficiencies to counter the lack of high level skills available in the marketplace,'' said Ms Eilert.
Clarius Group includes some of Australia's leading contracting and recruiting companies including Lloyd Morgan, Candle ICT, Alliance Accounting and Financial Services, Aligned Services and JAV IT.
