It's no secret that Australia's skills shortage has everyone looking at training, apprenticeships and initiatives to entice workers into getting a trade.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government has boosted this focus by releasing a list for the rest of the world to see exactly which sectors the country needs them.
The premier migration resource www.migrationexpert.com states that 200,000 jobs are advertised weekly, and part of the solution for filling this demand includes the issuing of 102,500 Skilled Visas by June 2008.
Approximately 15,000 of those may be construction workers to cope with the country's housing shortage which may be attractive to Americans and Brits who wish to emmigrate in the face of downturns at home.
There are 17 job types - many of which are trades or TAFE-trained occupations - on Rudd's list which serve as a guide for skilled overseas people looking to move to Australia:
- Mining & construction: Carpenters, bricklayers, joiners, roof plumbers, and wall and floor tilers.
- Health/community services: Nursing assistants, carers, and child-care & special-care workers.
- Mechanical: Panel beaters, auto electricians, and vehicle painters & body makers.
- Service industries: Hairdressers, cooks, sales representatives, and travel/tourism agents.
These occupations have topped the Australian government's priority list for its first batch of 20,000 new skilled training places and the first of 450,000 the Government has promised over the next four years.
"By significantly increasing the skills base of the Australian workforce, the extra skills training places will ease a capacity constraint in the Australian economy, and put downward pressure on inflation," Mr Rudd explained.
The training places would be targeted to the areas with the greatest vacancies, such as mining and construction.
"What we'll do, and the Immigration Minister is looking at this right now, is use that increase in the skilled migration quota to look at the specific needs of the construction industry," Rudd said.
The Housing Industry Association (HIA) of Australia, for example, wants a specialist temporary visa program to address the country's critical shortage of construction workers and 15,000 workers would help.
"We've increased the possibility of bringing folk in," Rudd stated. "We know there's pressure in the construction industry for housing and obviously there is an availability in supply of various parts of the world."
Tradespeople from the UK will be considered, as long as they have skills that are readily transferable to Australia's residential building industry.
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