Wagga employers lose workers to JobSeeker payments

Meccanico owner Richard Moffatt said workers were increasingly hard to come by in Wagga's hospitality industry, which he says is being undercut by schemes such as JobKeeper.

"I think there is too much free government money out there to not work. What you can earn within a week in hospitality is nearly being matched by the government for what you can get to sit at home," Mr Moffatt said.

"There's not a lot of incentive. Hospitality is hard, fast-paced work, so some people would rather stay at home for the same amount of money rather than work in our industry."

Mr Moffatt said they have been doing a "massive recruitment drive" for more staff, but says more than half of the applicants do not even turn up to interviews.

He believes most of them are only applying to become eligible for Centrelink payments.

"Talking to other hospitality venue owners, everybody is struggling to get staff. No matter how much you advertise you cannot seem to get them," Mr Moffatt said.

"We've been doing a massive recruitment drive on social media, we're using Seek, we're using word-of-mouth, and it's just a very shallow pool."

He has started resorting to sharing staff with other restaurants in a bid to fill his rosters.

One of them is Magpies Nest, which has also had its own problems attracting chefs and waitstaff, especially following the closure of Charles Sturt University due to the pandemic.

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Director Hayley West said they relied heavily on students to fill their rosters, with 21 out of 22 of their front-of-house staff being student workers.

"CSU has been mainly doing just distance learning, which meant we didn't have the uni students in town that were looking for work and that's a huge dint in our workforce.

"Also, finding skilled chefs has always been difficult in Wagga, but we have noticed it has been a lot harder to find. The applicants coming through are a lot fewer."

Ms West said they were "holding their breath" for face-to-face classes to resume in late February.

Wagga Business Chamber president Rhyley Hunter said the labour shortages were a problem everywhere in Wagga, not just in the hospitality industry.

He said local businesses in all sectors were having problems recruiting workers, saying that JobKeeper was enticing people out of the job market.

"What we're hearing is since the JobKeeper and JobSeeker allowances came into play there's been a major shortage of people looking to put themselves forward for opportunities," Mr Hunter said.

"I definitely think JobSeeker is having an impact on local businesses. It was great for that 8 to 12 week period, but now it's becoming detrimental for businesses because some people are getting paid more to not work."