Meeting the skills shortage

Up to 17,800 additional skilled workers will be required in Western Australia each year for the next 10 years to cope with the state’s increased workforce needs, according to a new government report.

A State Training Board report released this week says the skills shortage will remain a feature of the WA labour market over the next 10 years due to the strength of the economy and the ageing workforce.

Among the top performing occupations, in terms of projected annual average employment growth, were intermediate mining and construction workers, plumbers, structural construction tradespersons, and related labourers.

The report did not take into consideration the demand for unskilled labour.

Forecasters believe the WA economy is unlikely to face a boom-bust scenario in the short to medium term, looking at the resources-fuelled economic growth as more of a step change.

State Training Board chairman Keith Spence said the demand would be met through a combination of general population growth, skilled migration from interstate and overseas, and the development of local training initiatives.

Mr Spence said training programs needed to be more flexible to make training more accessible to disengaged groups, such as the indigenous population and those in the under-19 age bracket, to bring them into the workforce.

He said industries needed to invest in upskilling their existing workforce, and implementing innovative and collaborative strategies.

“Industry has to play a big role in this. The training sector needs to work closer with industry,” Mr Spence said. “To solve [the skills shortage] requires not just skilled migration, but a whole raft of solutions to be put in place.”

The report says training programs must make it easier for people to become qualified in different occupations, enhancing the capacity of the workforce to react to any changes caused by shifts in the economy.

Among the report’s recommendations was that the government develop a white paper looking more broadly at the development and coordination of a training strategy for the next 10 years.

Education and Training Minister Mark McGowan said in a statement that an action plan would be developed for the WA training sector to respond to the demand for skills now and for the future.

A similar report addressing the labour force outlook in the minerals sector by the WA Chamber of Minerals and Energy, released last August, said that, by 2015, the state’s minerals sector alone would need an additional 42,000 workers to achieve predicted increases in output.

The largest shortages were in the non-professional occupational classifications. The greatest projected increases were in tradespersons and semi-skilled employment, which make up roughly 73 per cent of employment in the nine commodities covered in the report.