When Australia made it to 26 years without suffering recession – a new world record – earlier this year, much was made about the relative strength of the economy. There’s no doubting the record of the last quarter of a century has been impressive, especially compared to many rival nations, but there’s only so long that you can bask in the glory of the past.
While the economy has clearly had the skills needed to deliver a successful economy, what’s the position looking like going forward? In particular, are we losing sight of training people in the non-academic skills we need to be to able to thrive moving forward?
Tradespeople are in demand
One way to gauge a potential skills gap is to look at the vacancies in the economy and see where there is a shortage.
Online employment site Indeed analysed its jobs listings to look at the positions that were unfilled for 60 days or more – suggesting that there is a lack of suitable candidates.
Interestingly, seven of the top 20 hardest positions to fill were tradespeople. Fifth on the whole list were glaziers, with 45 percent of jobs unfilled after 60 days.
The full list was as follows:
- Crew member
- Shift manager
- Pizza cook
- Beautician
- Glazier
- Massage therapist
- Plasterer
- Carpenter
- Driver
- Hairstylist
- Panel beater
- Installer
- Shop assistant
- Detailer
- Veterinarian
- Cabinetmaker
- Plumber
- Tutor
- Maintenance electrician
- Air conditioning engineer
In many of these cases, vocational training could well help to bridge the gap, in either training or retraining people so that they are able to fill these positions.
Automation might make vocational training even more important
Yet, this might also be the wrong way to look at the skills needed in the economy.
The positions needed to deliver products and services right across the Australian economy might well alter drastically as a result of automation.
Indeed, one estimate suggests that more than five million Australian jobs might cease to exist as a result of the next big technological advances. The early signs of this ‘fourth industrial revolution’ are already upon us and can be seen by those with a close eye on trading currency or products such as CFDs on the markets (for a handy explainer on ‘what is CFD trading?’ follow the link).
In this case, the vocational skillset of the economy is not so much at risk in the short term in the unfilled vacancies above, but in the medium to long-term and the jobs that could well be at risk.
If this is the case, however, vocational training might be even more important than we recognise. If large swathes of the workforce need to find new ways of gaining employment the vocational training sector could soon become very busy indeed.
Rod Camm, Chief Executive of the Australian Council for Private Education and Training, said: “All the evidence is now that workers will have many jobs in their careers; not just one, but perhaps 15 to 20.
“That portability in the labour market means they need more than technical skills but more general knowledge and problem-solving skills.”
Braced for change
In the short term, therefore, we can see that vocational training can play a key role in helping to find the skilled tradespeople that are in short supply. Beyond this, however, bigger and more radical change to the economy might place an even greater emphasis on the vocational sector and its ability to help workers to move with the times.
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Photo: Getty Images
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