Chefs and hairdressers are a rarity Down Under

Melbourne, Dec 2 : The world might be cribbing about scarcity of jobs, courtesy the financial crunch, but chefs and hairdressers in Australia remain two of the top 10 skilled occupations where there still remains a shortage, says a new quarterly survey.

The Clarius Skills Index revealed that skill shortages in 13 of the 19 occupation categories monitored were at their highest levels since 2001.

This implied that the worsening economic conditions don't really mean an end to the skills crisis.

The new index for the September quarter was 103.5, a slight increase on the 103.3 recorded in the previous quarter and higher than the 102.4 registered a year earlier.

A score of 100 indicates a balance between labour supply and demand. A reading greater than 105 is regarded as extreme, conversely a score of 95 to 98 is moderate.

"Our experience suggests that while most industry sectors will shed jobs in the short term, many redundancies will impact employees now regarded as low performers but who may have been better positioned in the boom times," the Daily Telegraph quoted Clarius Group executive chairman Geoff Moles as saying.

Although there were an estimated two million professional and associate professional jobs either taken or available, there were only 1.94 million available to fill them.

In the same way, trades account for 1.275 million jobs, but only 1.214 million people were available to fill them.

"Financial services and some parts of the commercial property sector have eased significantly, but the slowdown is far from uniform across all industries and in particular the niche roles such as those in the IT sector," said Moles.

The jobless rate presently sits at 4.3 per cent.

Top 10 occupations with highest level of skills shortages

1 Chefs

2 Metal-related tradespersons

3 Hairdressers

4 Automotive-related tradespersons

5 Health professionals

6 Food-related tradepersons

7 Computing professionals

8 Building and engineering professionals

9 Construction tradespersons

10 Printing tradespersons

ANI