Recruiters feel staff crisis as Number of job hunters dry up

Recruitment website SEEK reports that job applications per ad have gone down 50 per cent nationwide between December 2019 and December 2021, while job ads have gone up 36.6 per cent in that same period.

Rhyley Hunter, the CEO of Huntsman recruiting, said that he was seeing businesses of all types struggling to find staff.

"Professional services, trades, retail and hospitality - I've been recruiting for over 12 years and I've never seen the market like this," he said.

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Mr Hunter said that the number of applicants his company received had "dropped significantly" over the last two years.

"This has always been an issue, however the pandemic has amplified it and brought the change about a lot more rapidly," he said.

Mr Hunter thinks one reason people are can't attract staff is the changed nature of work brought on by the pandemic, with companies offering more attractive and competitive work packages to keep their current staff.

"Work from home, flexibility, reduced hours, increased salaries, better benefits - it's levelled the playing field so businesses now must look at other options like unlimited annual leave or a four-day working week," he said.

Programmed recruitment account manager Dionne Anderson said the worker shortage had been "huge" for at least 12 months.

"We supply to a lot of the big business around Wagga with casual labour hire ... normally we'd get 100-plus applicants, maybe more, now you're lucky to get five to 10," she said. "And half of the applicants don't have the certificates or qualifications you're after.

"We get a few applicants, you call them, they don't call you back. Or we've even got people set to start work, given them PPE, and they don't turn up to work. It's a real struggle."

Mrs Anderson said that the government pandemic interventions were keeping some people out of the workforce.

"I think with all the government incentives that were given out, I think people become comfortable with them," she said.

"Another struggle was once they brought in double vaccination, a lot of people refusing to get double vaccinated and a lot of sites have brought that in.

"And with the casual workforce ... people are scared to take causal roles because if they are to get sick they don't get paid ... people are looking for the full-time roles."

Mrs Anderson said that this was the worst staffing crisis she had seen in the last decade. "It was usually the other end of the scale and we'd have too many applicants," she said. "But this is the worst I've ever seen it."

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