Good help is hard to find, harder to keep

AUSSIE businesses are struggling to get back on their feet following the Covid-19 pandemic and are in desperate need of migrant workers, according to the nation’s largest employer group.

The federal government’s latest economic update indicates Australia’s financial recovery from the crisis will rely heavily on overseas migration.

But the Australian Industry Group – which represents private business in sectors ranging from manufacturing, construction and transport – says the current migration cap is too low to allow businesses to bounce back.

In a submission to the Home Affairs Department, AI Group chief executive Innes Willox urged the government to increase the migration cap by 30,000 people for 2022.

“AI Group was disappointed with the reduction to a maximum of 160,000 places in the annual permanent migration that was in place for 2020,” Mr Willox said.

“This reduction was not warranted, and despite the barriers to reaching this ceiling, we believe it should be returned to 190,000 places in the 2022/23 federal budget.”

Australia’s engineering firms are expected to be particularly hard-hit as the demand for engineers outstrips the number of domestic engineering graduates. Without the usual stream of around 6000 overseas undergraduate engineering students who are able to work for two years in Australia after graduation, the industry is expected to suffer.

“Engineering is an example of a sector that we will rely on during the Covid economic recovery but which is experiencing ongoing and significant skill shortages,” Mr Willox said. “It is estimated that over the next few years Australia will need 11,000 new engineers annually, which is around 2400 more than the domestic undergraduate engineering completions each year.”

The push to increase the intake of migrant workers comes as Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar is set to release an updated population statement on Monday.

The release is expected to reveal a slow return to prepandemic population levels, with population growth falling to its lowest level in Australia in more than 100 years.

Mr Sukkar said the fall was largely caused by “restrictions on international borders and the impact on migration – typically the main source of Australia’s population growth”.

But Mr Willox said more migrants would not be enough, urging the government to return its skilled worker quota to two-thirds of the migration intake.

A recent survey by AI Group found that 73 per cent of Australian businesses expected to have difficulty in finding and/or retaining skilled labour in 2022.