Locals lose out as new jobs soar

THE number of jobs in Townsville is steadily improving but locals may not be successfully obtaining them, according to a local economist.

A TP Human Capital Townsville Workforce Report for May has found while job numbers were improving, the unemployment rate remained steady as did the workforce participation rate.

Economist Colin Dwyer crunched the numbers and said the employment rate had improved considerably from the period between 2013- 17 when the region was shedding jobs.

“Townsville region’s annual average unemployment rate is steady at 8.5 per cent, this is 2.3 per cent points better than the same time last year in May 2017,” he said.

“There are still 10,000 people unemployed. There is a way to go to reduce that number to an acceptable level. Male unemployment is 7.8 per cent and female unemployment 9.2 per cent.”

Mr Dwyer said Townsville would likely see jobs created in the mining and construction sectors.

“I think one of the questions we need to ask is why we’re creating jobs, but the locally unemployed aren’t getting them,” he said.

“We’re not losing locally unemployed but those jobs may be going to people from other regions to absorb jobs that we don’t have the skills for … the locally unemployed may not have the skills to supply major infrastructure projects.”

Civil Safety business development manager Noel Gertz said training programs should be made available for people so they had the skills to be employed in infrastructure projects.

“To have an available work experience placement as a transition process into the workforce where more community based programs would start to determine the suitability of the person,” Mr Gertz said.

“You can’t just take a person from a training process and throw them into a project that requires higher skill sets, you need to give them practical work skills and the opportunity to build up skills and competence.

“There should be some industry collaboration to provide work experience opportunities.”