Despite record unemployment, bosses in the hospitality industry claims they are struggling to fill vacant positions, often having no applicants for advertised jobs.
According to the above interview, the hospitality industry is highly reliant on temporary migrant labour and as many of 200,000 of these workers have left Australia due to COVID-19. This has left the industry with a “massive skills shortage”.
Obviously, these claims are utter bullshit. The Accommodation & food services industry has lost nearly 30% of its jobs according to the ATO:
Accordingly, there is an abundance of surplus workers looking for a job.
The claims about a lack of applicants also flies in the face of unpublished data from SEEK, which shows that the number of job applications submitted to employers in June was significantly above pre-COVID levels:
The figures show that at the end of June, the number of applicants per job was 16% higher than in February, while candidate availability was about 30% higher than in February. This is despite the fact that the JobSeeker unemployment benefit was temporarily doubled due to the virus, and suggestions that this has resulted in some businesses finding it hard to recruit staff:
The measure – known as “candidate availability” – hit 40% above February levels in April, when the website recorded its lower point of job ad volume growth, and was still about 30% above pre-pandemic levels earlier in June.
Remember, too, that the hospitality industry is way overrepresented in cases of migrant wage theft (see here and here).
The hospitality industry has exploited migrant workers to line their own pockets. Low wages, insecure work environments, the destruction of unions, and a supportive immigration system have made these jobs unattractive to the average Australian.
Improving working conditions, higher wages, and better representation will bring people back to the industry.
