WA skills shortage

SKILLED people across the globe are beginning to see that their dream of migrating to Australia has never been easier to achieve following a Federal Government incentive to encourage more people to apply for residence visas.  The skills shortage is acute and applies to all States so it doesn’t matter whether you are a carpenter or a psychiatrist, a scientist or a hairdresser, a plumber or a pharmacist, the list of skills needed is really comprehensive.

Ken Regan from Australian Homebuyers International (AHI) says he has been following this development with great interest and confirmed that there has been a significant upward swing in enquiries from people wishing to buy property who have just applied for residence visas.

“We’re receiving phone calls from South Africans, expat Australians who want to return home, a significant number from the Pakistani and Indian communities and of course from British people themselves,” Mr Regan said.

“I’ve just returned from a trip to Perth and Dubai where thousands of Australian and South African expats live and we’ve been astonished at the level of interest shown, particularly to WA.  In large part this is because of the on-going mining boom, so you can imagine the opportunities for geologists, engineers, project managers, truck drivers, chefs and medical staff.”

“However,” he cautioned, “owning a property in Australia does not entitle visa applicants to automatic residency.  This question came up many times in the Middle East, so we need to make it perfectly clear that owning a property in Australia and applying for a residency visa are mutually exclusive.  What I can say is that investing in Australian property is a good move with or without a visa.”

“While I was over in Perth I met a 25 year old French geologist who commutes to work on a plane and takes the 1300-km journey from  Perth to the mining town of Karratha on the continent’s barren northwest coast. She told me that Australia is like an El Dorado and that she now nets $9,000 a month, working two weeks out of every three at the Whim Creek prospect, an old open-cut copper mine dug out of the red rocky plain.  She loves Perth and her job.  She told me she originally came there on holiday but found it so easy to find a job as a geologist that she stayed.  There are hundreds of stories like this.”

The tightening labour market is driving up wages, and combined with the resurgent Aussie dollar, is putting pressure on the entire manufacturing sector.

“A mine supervisor can earn in excess of $200,000, more than the head of the Federal Reserve. A truck-driver’s salary easily runs into six figures. A construction worker can make over $150,000, more than a doctor or lawyer and the cleaning girls at the mine camps can easily earn $100,000 a year,” Ken told me.

$100,000 a year?  For cleaning? Excuse me while I go and book my flight to Perth!

Seriously though, the reason for this labour shortage, and the sky-high wages that come with it, is simple: Australia, with a population of 22 million, does not have the workforce to exploit its enormous natural bounty – at least not at the pace required to satisfy Asia’s hunger for resources. The mining and resources industry, including oil and gas, has roughly $400 billion in new projects on the drawing board in Australia and will need another roughly 70,000 workers over the next five years alone, according to government estimates. The construction industry is projected to need another 196,000 workers over the same period, many of them associated with new mining and energy projects.

The boom is just beginning and, already, labour is short – not just for skilled jobs like geologists but also for unskilled work, creating a situation where even building labourers, cleaners, cooks and drivers are earning stratospheric wages.

Call Ken Regan for an informal chat about moving to WA and how AHI can help you to get a foot in the door to an upwardly mobile property market.  Tel: +44 207 060 0066 or visit www.ahinternational.net.au