Some employers have been complaining about a labour shortage, but this labour shortage is not real.

The real causes are:
* Very severe constraints on labour mobility.
* Job snob employers being too picky about the workers they hire, including illegal discrimination.
* Toxic workplace environments, causing problems with labour retention.
* Low wages growth and employers offering too little money for the work.

Labour mobility

It is a massive scandal that it's easier to relocate from the other side of the world to take an Australian job than it is to relocate across a state border.

Labour mobility within Australia is very tightly bound up in high costs, red tape, compliance burdens, massive penalties, high taxes, high government costs and unwarranted discrimination that make it completely impractical to relocate within Australia to take up jobs unless one has the means to fund that relocation. Employers are unwilling to pay those relocation costs and many prospective employees are unable to pay.

This is one reason why farmers can't get enough Australians to do harvest work.

Discrimination

Some employers refuse to hire locals to work for them. This is known to occur in harvest work and is so common on farms that willing locals cannot get any harvest work at all. These unscrupulous farmers are charging high rents for farm accommodation, and refuse to hire locals who do not need to use that accommodation or cannot otherwise be exploited.

Staff are no longer tolerating workplace abuse and are quitting in droves

The pandemic has forced many workers to reassess their life priorities. Many of them have chosen to quit jobs that have a poor or toxic work environment.

Any company that has problems with staff retention should review their workplace culture.

Low wages growth biting back

Australia has had record low wages growth for most of the last eight years, and this low growth is inhibiting the labour market. The cost of living has increased and in extreme cases this is making it unviable to take up jobs at all. Child care costs are a particular issue here. When that second job in a household is no longer profitable, workers will not take that job.

The days when employers can screw down wages are now at an end. The surest way to fix any perceived shortage of labour is to offer more money.

Bam wrote on Nov 1^st, 2021 at 10:24am:


This point, despite being close to the mark, contradicts the subject of your thread?

Bam wrote on Nov 1^st, 2021 at 10:24am:


Of course the truth is, if there really was a labour shortage, wages would not - could not - remain stagnant as they are now. In that situation, it would be employees, not employers, who have the bargaining power.

Despite a temporary suspension of the overseas-work-visa rort, wages don't seem to have changed much in the last year or so - which leads me to conclude that businesses in reality are not doing too badly at all - worker supply wise. But they are clearly getting antsy. This I assume will die down once the cheap overseas labour starts pouring in again.

Bam wrote on Nov 5^th, 2021 at 6:36pm:



if only more employers were like this guy

https://www.hcamag.com/au/news/general/ceo-who-took-pay-cut-to-raise-staff-minim...

increases workers pay and productivity and revenue TRIPLES.