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Economic and Financial Market Update: Labour pains

01 July 2022

Summary:

Finding workers is currently the number one concern of many firms;
That reflects both demand and supply issues;
It is likely to remain an issue for the next year, although the problem may be diminishing by end 2023;
The longer-term problem is that there appears to be a growing mismatch between jobs available and the workers to fill them;
The good news is that a sizeable proportion of firms are looking to boost the productivity of their existing staff.

Firms are currently facing a number of challenges, from rising input costs to supply-chain problems. But the biggest issue for many businesses is concerns about getting workers. Firms thought it was tough finding and keeping employees back in the mining boom salad days. But that experience pales in comparison with what is currently happening. Finding workers is an issue for all sectors, although (as always) some sectors are finding it tougher than others.

Interestingly some of the sectors that have the highest ratio of vacancies (mining and finance) are amongst the sectors that report the least difficulty in finding staff. By contrast some of the sectors with the lowest ratio of vacancies (such as education and retail) are amongst the sectors that report the greatest difficulty finding staff.