Skill Shortages in Australia

[master*and*commander]

It surprised me that School Teachers were on this list. There are a  fair few medical positions, including Anaesthetics (The highest paying job in Australia according to the ABS) and then Dentists (4th highest paying job), a fair few Engineering Fields.

I wonder why there aren't enough skilled people in these fields, and when there is no longer a shortage, if this will alter their currect pay rate.

I am also interested to know if people currently in the process of aquiring these skills are taken into consideration when creating this list, considering it is also used to address our predicted future skill needs.

If they do, what is being done to encourage people to either retrain or pursue these careers?

The List

[cherry*135]

At our regional Uni, teaching & nursing courses have a lower entry score and fees are lower than most courses ..that is to encourage more people to study those careers. Although it also means students who don't get a high enough score for the course they wanted will chose teaching with the lower score as a default, not because they genuinely want to be teachers.

[***super_nova***]

The reason why there is not enough teachers is partial due to the fact that many teachers leave long before retirement age.  Teaching kids that are being told at home that they do not have to respect or obey teachers is just too difficult.  Many teachers are retiring because it is too stressful to cope with 30 spoiled brats.  I have several friends who used to love teaching, and were very good dedicated teachers; they stayed up late into a night preparing their classes.  But after while it just got all too much for them, and they got jobs that paid them lot more, for 1/2 as much stress and shorter hours. 

As far as specialist medical jobs go; to start with medicine is very tough course to do, it takes so many years during which you have no time for social life, and unless you have a wealthy parents you end up with huge HECS debt. 

[aussiemum2]

Nurses that have just completed 3 years  at Uni,  are struggling to get New Grad positions.

There is one article of a new RN on the union site, unable to get a new grad job, decided to do her Masters in Nursing. Still unable to get a job, she works at DJ's in sales.

However, we have close to 70% of our nursing staff from India. 

I just dont get it.

[aussiemum2]

.....I meant to say, the reason we have so many Indian nurses is they state  we are short of skilled workers.

[lakeland27]

Australian Skill Shortages: How the Howard Government Did Not Change its Mind

1. Alan Montague*
2. Judith Bessant*

Abstract

This article begins by assessing the evidence that there was, and is, a skill shortage in Australia, and notes that for some years the Howard government initially denied there was a problem of unmet demand for skilled people. It was not until late 2006 that we saw any kind of official acknowledgement of a problem. On 12 October 2006, Prime Minister Howard announced a ‘Skills for the Future’ policy that involved a commitment to spend $837 million over five years, and aimed ‘to help build a more highly skilled and responsive workforce to support Australia's long-term economic growth’. Acknowledging that policy-making begins with the framing or constitution of a problem, assessments are offered of this federal government's account of the ‘skill shortage’ problem. The questions posed in this article are: what policy initiatives during the Howard years were designed to address issues of training, and what was their potential for addressing the problem of an apparent shortage of skilled workers in Australia? full PDF download on this page http://elr.sagepub.com/content/18/1/99.short