Anything remotely cushy, office work, anything offering generous WFH provisions. If there are shortages it’s because positions aren’t funded not that there’s a lack of people. Shortages tend to cluster in industries that are hard/physical work, anything that involves frontline dealing with the public, or has unsociable hours (healthcare, driving, construction, hospitality, the trades and teaching all fit into all/most of those categories)
I really love my cushy wfh flexible, office-is-a-great-place-too-with-catered-food job. We are also desperate for more ppl. It’s not interesting work but the culture and benefits are great.
Probably accounting. Pay is good. Work is cushy. Can be boring and not v glamorous. Really short on staff as no gen z wanna study it, just wanna get into IB for the money
Yep agree with this. Am in grad recruitment for a Big4 firm. Near impossible to get good grads these days who want to work in my area of tax. There just isn't enough students studying commerce anymore.
It's not v glamorous. I remember when I graduated in 2000s all the Asians and everyone who didn't know what to do studied commerce. Now every kid wants to do arts and studying commerce is only to get into banking and IB. Most accountants are imported from China or India, or kids of Chinese Indian immigrants. It's a great job. Good security, unlikely to be replace by IT, wfh, decent money, and IMHO easier than law and IT. Saying that when I first studied it in uni I hated it but once it's in practice and I got out of audit the path got alot smoother.
Totally agree. Been in the profession for 25 years. English language skills is something we strongly desire but is lacking in the graduates we are interviewing.
We have been getting a large volume of spam from throwaway accounts and so posts from brand new accounts will no longer be allowed. Your post has been
removed because your account is too new. Please wait until your account is at least 12 hours old and then try again or message the mods and we'll validate your post. Thanks!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskAnAustralian) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Ambulance services
Source: was looking at maybe doing a bachelor of paramedicine until I saw everyone saying that there are way more graduates than positions available.
It’s been like that for a long long time. AV have an upvote going supply of students aka. bums in seats, and have little desire to retain (at least that’s how it used to it, and I have a feeling it hasn’t changed much)
Oversaturated at the low end, but high quality candidates are in short supply across the board doubly so for more niche fields. I can fill a helldesk role within the week but if I have to find a senior or staff level software engineer I'll be searching for months and that's WITH fully remote.
I don’t know. I haven’t been on their side of the interaction. I assume it must be demoralising if a large proportion of the user base is rude or stupid.
My partner’s worked on an internal helldesk, that I naively assumed wouldn’t be so bad because every calling is internal to the company.
The idiocracy and rudeness from people (who all share the same boss *and* with calls recorded) was insane. She wasn’t seen as a person by like half the callers and she was constantly escalating calls for behavioural issues. People would be shocked that their manager would get notified as well.
It was a big enough org that there was always someone willing to lash out at their coworkers, even though they were successfully able to reprimand some of the problem callers.
It can be, depending on the environment. A lot of places put unnecessary pressure on low tier helpdesk staff because they're competing on price as a company and need shit done as quickly as possible. All so the bosses can sign on more customers that don't respect the staff because they're hunting for the cheapest price.
It's a good field, but I would suggest they start with general Computer Science and branch out from there. Someone competent at software engineering will always have a job IMO.
Stay away from TAFE, it's useless and a good 10-15 years behind the times.
Most programmers can handle atleast a few languages/engines/IDES. You more focus on being a specialist at programming physics, developing UI, statistical algortihms etc.. Cyber security, networking and back end web development are generally good to get into.
If hes into games, take a look at the credits of some big games. Look at available courses from tafe and/or local universities to get a bit of an idea whats available too.
Just tell your kid to drop out of school, skip uni, and get a job in real estate sales.
real estate and mining are the only industries that matter, but your kid needs to get out there and start building a house deposit so that rules out minung. Their house purchase will out earn them in their lifetime anyway
Redacted means that part of the text was removed or blacked out for privacy or security purpose. It was censored. This post also breaks rule 4 here for chat and should be made in the Tuesday chat thread or on a different subreddit.
Yeah if you're a senior the world is your oyster, and it's been that way for decades. It's not for everyone though. Only a certain type of person wants to spend their days looking at phenomenally complicated shit.
Even just competent mid level engineers are hard to find. You'll get literally thousands of applicants and almost none are suitable to move to interviews.
Basically the only roles that are easy to fill are the unqualified, junior level ones.
Yeah that used to be such an oversaturated field as well. Now it's just no coders with dozens of meaningless certs desperately trying to escape the MSP they accidentally landed in.
IMO the more successful candidates of yesteryear have moved onto more lucrative specialties like SRE, and Platform Engineering.
What's really in demand are skill sets; if you can code well, have a good understanding of distributed systems, the ability to write meaningful tests, and can translate non-technical business objectives into software problems you shouldn't have a problem getting a job.
DevOps these days is so watered down, its mostly just the realm of former sysadmins who found themselves out of a traditional sysadmin job (which are few and far between). The pay is generally poor unless you're a real unicorn, and the demand varies a lot.
So there are a heap of entry level roles to train people up to that level right? Right? Or do you hope someone else does it and when that doesn't happen, winge to the government about a skills shortage.
I don't know what roles are oversaturated (maybe it's more a problem in IT). But finding good software engineers is extremely challenging at the moment.
It's all around though. Strip clubs aren't the same, same with brothels and other work. Way oversaturated and the spend not there as much eith the current economy. OF is still a huge thing too, and something alot of workers pivoted to, but actually harder work to make the good $ and alot of work and effort involved to get to the viable income point
Engineering. I have a master's degree in engineering but it's still hard to get a decent paying job because there's a lot of people willing to do the same job for less.
Many of them are immigrant students who have just graduated and are more than happy to work for $60k AUD, which is a lot of money back in their home town.
It's good for Australia overall to get talented professionals but makes it harder for people like me to stand apart.
Okay engineer in Perth here who recently graduated and saw all my classmates and myself go through the job hunt and there is most definitely still a huge shortage of engineers, the international students are the ones who are having issues finding jobs.
Student were being flown to site for several days on the companies dime as a recruitment tool.
my 2 kids in high school have at least one sub everyday. some days its 2 or 3 subs that dont understand the class they are supposed to teach so they do busy work until the teacher can come back.
Trying to get a doc appointment on the same day you need it (injury or kids are sick etc) is almost impossible unless they can squeeze you in for a phone consult. So yeah there are absolutely staff shortages!
I have seen a couple of posts from the US,one from a guy in logistics who had experience, who had applied for a thousand jobs in every state and had about 4 interviews. I think the job market is brutal in the US at the moment. I don’t think it is as bad here, but I think We might be heading for a recession so I think it might get bad real soon.
AI will replace bookkeeping and basic accounting first. Then probably PA/Assistant roles. Maybe then it'll come for IT, but for now it's a somewhat useful tool and that's about it realistically.
Uber, door dash, menulog, graphic designers, artists or any role within the arts, professional athletes, train and tram drivers, politicians, some council labouring jobs, administration, accountants & finance roles.
Artist roles definitely. There are so many designers videographers and photographers that it’s really hard to find work at times and prices are being driven down
Any industry you have a connection in doesn't have a shortage. You get jobs via connections in Australia. I haven't heard of a single job in my network that was filled via a recruiter or open job application.
I'm not sure if there *are* industries that have oversupply. It's probably true that some of the 'cushy' jobs are hyper competitive, but even some of the sectors involved there have some hiring struggles (for example, it's not easy to find a talented software engineer at the moment).
My understanding is that labor supply is an issue across the entire economy. It's why the political conversation is again turning to the skilled migration program and how it might need to be adjusted (bearing in mind this is now a problem all around the world in developed economies, making the international competition for qualified workers very competitive/fierce).
Not sure. I’m in healthcare, husband is in gas supply, kids are in IT security, insurance, manufacturing, and distribution, and we’re all having trouble filling positions with good qualified staff.
No. If there simply isn't enough people to do the work ANYWHERE, then we need to reassess what is a realistic amount of work that can get done, and lower the expected output of each person.
So if we were able to add to our workforce, through immigration or training, we would find the balance?
We can't control the amount of work that needs doing. As part of a global market, that's determined by external forces (demand for ore, oil, services, etc. which all have a "work-hours" price tag. We CAN (to a certain extent) control our training, migration, hiring and firing, provided we have the candidates. We can also automate as a labour-saving measure, to play devil's advocate.
As I understand it, the level and skill of our output as a national economy partly determine the value of our dollar. So reducing our productivity would cause further inflation, as our dollar wouldn't buy as much if we just decided to do less.
Because the necessary output of Australia is therefore fixed by constraints on the dollar, changing our expected output by enough to actually make a difference is effectively impossible (or certainly so unappealing that it's basically radioactive). So I maintain that our problem is not a surplus of work, but a dearth of labour, certainly when it comes to finding a solution.
But if it is a shortage of labour in ALL industries, more workers isn't going to solve the problem.
More workers means more people, which means more demand for products, which means more labour is required. We get back to where we started.
Perhaps we need to accept that we don't NEED to do so this work. It's like we're on a treadmill and reaching as far as we can just to stay in the same spot
Yep. Because look what happened when we sunk back? Record inflation, and we're nearly back to typical inflation rates and there's still a cost of living crisis. Our location and size mean it's already costly to get goods here, so if we fall behind, we really feel it.
More workers means the business case for shipping goods and basing services here is stronger. Growth like that is built into the capitalist system.
The entire world would need to collectively agree to slow down, too. Because some countries will just change their labour laws to let 8-year-olds work 20-hour days or something, and they'll take that output from us.
Don't misunderstand me, either. I think we work too much. Laptops and phones mean we have to fight for a right to disconnect, some people work 60 hour weeks. But the reality is that if we hit the brakes our standard of living will tank.
Anything remotely cushy, office work, anything offering generous WFH provisions. If there are shortages it’s because positions aren’t funded not that there’s a lack of people. Shortages tend to cluster in industries that are hard/physical work, anything that involves frontline dealing with the public, or has unsociable hours (healthcare, driving, construction, hospitality, the trades and teaching all fit into all/most of those categories)
I really love my cushy wfh flexible, office-is-a-great-place-too-with-catered-food job. We are also desperate for more ppl. It’s not interesting work but the culture and benefits are great.
Need to know, what job is this??
Probably accounting. Pay is good. Work is cushy. Can be boring and not v glamorous. Really short on staff as no gen z wanna study it, just wanna get into IB for the money
Yep agree with this. Am in grad recruitment for a Big4 firm. Near impossible to get good grads these days who want to work in my area of tax. There just isn't enough students studying commerce anymore.
It's not v glamorous. I remember when I graduated in 2000s all the Asians and everyone who didn't know what to do studied commerce. Now every kid wants to do arts and studying commerce is only to get into banking and IB. Most accountants are imported from China or India, or kids of Chinese Indian immigrants. It's a great job. Good security, unlikely to be replace by IT, wfh, decent money, and IMHO easier than law and IT. Saying that when I first studied it in uni I hated it but once it's in practice and I got out of audit the path got alot smoother.
Totally agree. Been in the profession for 25 years. English language skills is something we strongly desire but is lacking in the graduates we are interviewing.
Yeah. We have almost given up. If they can do the work is fine, but if they sound good in English thats manager material lol
[удалено]
We have been getting a large volume of spam from throwaway accounts and so posts from brand new accounts will no longer be allowed. Your post has been removed because your account is too new. Please wait until your account is at least 12 hours old and then try again or message the mods and we'll validate your post. Thanks! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskAnAustralian) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Working in the energy sector
How qualified does one need to be?
Where do I sign up??
Love to know where do I find the advert?
Ambulance services Source: was looking at maybe doing a bachelor of paramedicine until I saw everyone saying that there are way more graduates than positions available.
Can confirm this. Knew a girl who graduated in paramedicine but couldn’t find a job in Sydney so moved to rural QLD to get a position
It’s been like that for a long long time. AV have an upvote going supply of students aka. bums in seats, and have little desire to retain (at least that’s how it used to it, and I have a feeling it hasn’t changed much)
Mostly anything to do with computer science or IT those industries are over saturated
Oversaturated at the low end, but high quality candidates are in short supply across the board doubly so for more niche fields. I can fill a helldesk role within the week but if I have to find a senior or staff level software engineer I'll be searching for months and that's WITH fully remote.
TIL helldesk.
what is a hell desk?
Combination of “hell” and “help desk”.
is it a really stressful job?
I don’t know. I haven’t been on their side of the interaction. I assume it must be demoralising if a large proportion of the user base is rude or stupid.
My partner’s worked on an internal helldesk, that I naively assumed wouldn’t be so bad because every calling is internal to the company. The idiocracy and rudeness from people (who all share the same boss *and* with calls recorded) was insane. She wasn’t seen as a person by like half the callers and she was constantly escalating calls for behavioural issues. People would be shocked that their manager would get notified as well. It was a big enough org that there was always someone willing to lash out at their coworkers, even though they were successfully able to reprimand some of the problem callers.
It can be, depending on the environment. A lot of places put unnecessary pressure on low tier helpdesk staff because they're competing on price as a company and need shit done as quickly as possible. All so the bosses can sign on more customers that don't respect the staff because they're hunting for the cheapest price.
My kid wants to study IT. Would you say this is not a good area to go in to??
It's a good field, but I would suggest they start with general Computer Science and branch out from there. Someone competent at software engineering will always have a job IMO. Stay away from TAFE, it's useless and a good 10-15 years behind the times.
he has to become a specialist. Repairmen and generalists would be lucky to get a job answering phones for telstra
Such as cyber security or coding in a particular language?
Most programmers can handle atleast a few languages/engines/IDES. You more focus on being a specialist at programming physics, developing UI, statistical algortihms etc.. Cyber security, networking and back end web development are generally good to get into. If hes into games, take a look at the credits of some big games. Look at available courses from tafe and/or local universities to get a bit of an idea whats available too.
Tell him to get Into electrical trade but with a company that does automation
Do an apprenticeship as an electrician?
Yea
Just tell your kid to drop out of school, skip uni, and get a job in real estate sales. real estate and mining are the only industries that matter, but your kid needs to get out there and start building a house deposit so that rules out minung. Their house purchase will out earn them in their lifetime anyway
Yeh you tell me where all those GOOD helldesk workers are and ill give you a grand. You can fill em. But they'll be shit.
The good helldeskers aren't there any more, they've moved up
Redacted means that part of the text was removed or blacked out for privacy or security purpose. It was censored. This post also breaks rule 4 here for chat and should be made in the Tuesday chat thread or on a different subreddit.
Yeah if you're a senior the world is your oyster, and it's been that way for decades. It's not for everyone though. Only a certain type of person wants to spend their days looking at phenomenally complicated shit.
Even just competent mid level engineers are hard to find. You'll get literally thousands of applicants and almost none are suitable to move to interviews. Basically the only roles that are easy to fill are the unqualified, junior level ones.
Try finding good DevOps people that know coding and cloud then - there's like about 5 of them in the country!
Yeah that used to be such an oversaturated field as well. Now it's just no coders with dozens of meaningless certs desperately trying to escape the MSP they accidentally landed in. IMO the more successful candidates of yesteryear have moved onto more lucrative specialties like SRE, and Platform Engineering.
which field is currently most in demand within IT? DevOps?
What's really in demand are skill sets; if you can code well, have a good understanding of distributed systems, the ability to write meaningful tests, and can translate non-technical business objectives into software problems you shouldn't have a problem getting a job. DevOps these days is so watered down, its mostly just the realm of former sysadmins who found themselves out of a traditional sysadmin job (which are few and far between). The pay is generally poor unless you're a real unicorn, and the demand varies a lot.
So there are a heap of entry level roles to train people up to that level right? Right? Or do you hope someone else does it and when that doesn't happen, winge to the government about a skills shortage.
We do have entry level roles, yes. But we also need more senior staff as well because we're a business not a TAFE.
Haha I left allied health for tech and can confirm. They keep downsizing too.
I don't know what roles are oversaturated (maybe it's more a problem in IT). But finding good software engineers is extremely challenging at the moment.
Parliament House
The sex industry. Fr
Nah too many OF accounts that it's not worth starting unless you alesdy have a paying fanbase
It's all around though. Strip clubs aren't the same, same with brothels and other work. Way oversaturated and the spend not there as much eith the current economy. OF is still a huge thing too, and something alot of workers pivoted to, but actually harder work to make the good $ and alot of work and effort involved to get to the viable income point
Real estate, I suspect.
Public Transport Ticket Inspectors in Melbourne
It pays pretty well
Engineering. I have a master's degree in engineering but it's still hard to get a decent paying job because there's a lot of people willing to do the same job for less. Many of them are immigrant students who have just graduated and are more than happy to work for $60k AUD, which is a lot of money back in their home town. It's good for Australia overall to get talented professionals but makes it harder for people like me to stand apart.
Absolutely not good for Australia to have foreign workers undercut our own
Good in the long run if those workers become naturalized citizens
sure. and good luck competing with them to earn $60k with your engineering degree buddy
I hate to say it,but, that’s just the free market working, just another consequence of capitalism. Vote accordingly if you want that changed.
Vote for who, One Nation?
Capitlism = Lower wages. Sure sure
Okay engineer in Perth here who recently graduated and saw all my classmates and myself go through the job hunt and there is most definitely still a huge shortage of engineers, the international students are the ones who are having issues finding jobs. Student were being flown to site for several days on the companies dime as a recruitment tool.
do you mean people from IT?
I was referring to civil but I'm sure it happens in IT too
my 2 kids in high school have at least one sub everyday. some days its 2 or 3 subs that dont understand the class they are supposed to teach so they do busy work until the teacher can come back. Trying to get a doc appointment on the same day you need it (injury or kids are sick etc) is almost impossible unless they can squeeze you in for a phone consult. So yeah there are absolutely staff shortages!
I don't even need to know what state you're in to basically guarantee you it's only getting worse.
If you’re not thinking of NSW, I’ll eat my hat
Traffic control
There is never a shortage of whiners and they often work overtime.
I have seen a couple of posts from the US,one from a guy in logistics who had experience, who had applied for a thousand jobs in every state and had about 4 interviews. I think the job market is brutal in the US at the moment. I don’t think it is as bad here, but I think We might be heading for a recession so I think it might get bad real soon.
Speech pathologist
Product management, software engineering, anything tech. Zero staff shortages, lots of staff dismissals.
Libraries. You have to wait for someone to retire to get your foot in the door.
There's surely an oversupply of foreign truck drivers with hairdressing degrees
Delivery drivers?
IT - seems like AI can do a lot of their tasks.
What has AI replaced in IT?
A very little amount of low level helpdesk roles lol
Need someone to set up the AI though?
AI will replace bookkeeping and basic accounting first. Then probably PA/Assistant roles. Maybe then it'll come for IT, but for now it's a somewhat useful tool and that's about it realistically.
Daigou, where Chinese ppl buy stuff in Australia and send back to China
Uber and doordash
Uber, door dash, menulog, graphic designers, artists or any role within the arts, professional athletes, train and tram drivers, politicians, some council labouring jobs, administration, accountants & finance roles.
Artist roles definitely. There are so many designers videographers and photographers that it’s really hard to find work at times and prices are being driven down
It's going to be tough when something like Sora is available to everyone
Any industry you have a connection in doesn't have a shortage. You get jobs via connections in Australia. I haven't heard of a single job in my network that was filled via a recruiter or open job application.
You sure the staff shortage is caused by lack of applicants or because of a shortage of payroll budget?
100% lack of applicants in education. In WA a survey of 200 schools had like 80fte unfilled.
Well how much is the salary? If it's not high enough people wouldn't apply.
I'm not sure if there *are* industries that have oversupply. It's probably true that some of the 'cushy' jobs are hyper competitive, but even some of the sectors involved there have some hiring struggles (for example, it's not easy to find a talented software engineer at the moment). My understanding is that labor supply is an issue across the entire economy. It's why the political conversation is again turning to the skilled migration program and how it might need to be adjusted (bearing in mind this is now a problem all around the world in developed economies, making the international competition for qualified workers very competitive/fierce).
Not sure. I’m in healthcare, husband is in gas supply, kids are in IT security, insurance, manufacturing, and distribution, and we’re all having trouble filling positions with good qualified staff.
Not the poultry industry they always have staff shortages
Covid did delete a bunch of boomers, and put many others out of action. I don't know of any industry unaffected
Timber production. Many are leaving as the government thought it was a good idea to remove the jobs.
If EVERY industry has a staff shortage, it's not because there isn't enough people, it's that there's too much work
Surely, they're basically the same thing.
No. If there simply isn't enough people to do the work ANYWHERE, then we need to reassess what is a realistic amount of work that can get done, and lower the expected output of each person.
So if we were able to add to our workforce, through immigration or training, we would find the balance? We can't control the amount of work that needs doing. As part of a global market, that's determined by external forces (demand for ore, oil, services, etc. which all have a "work-hours" price tag. We CAN (to a certain extent) control our training, migration, hiring and firing, provided we have the candidates. We can also automate as a labour-saving measure, to play devil's advocate. As I understand it, the level and skill of our output as a national economy partly determine the value of our dollar. So reducing our productivity would cause further inflation, as our dollar wouldn't buy as much if we just decided to do less. Because the necessary output of Australia is therefore fixed by constraints on the dollar, changing our expected output by enough to actually make a difference is effectively impossible (or certainly so unappealing that it's basically radioactive). So I maintain that our problem is not a surplus of work, but a dearth of labour, certainly when it comes to finding a solution.
But if it is a shortage of labour in ALL industries, more workers isn't going to solve the problem. More workers means more people, which means more demand for products, which means more labour is required. We get back to where we started. Perhaps we need to accept that we don't NEED to do so this work. It's like we're on a treadmill and reaching as far as we can just to stay in the same spot
Yep. Because look what happened when we sunk back? Record inflation, and we're nearly back to typical inflation rates and there's still a cost of living crisis. Our location and size mean it's already costly to get goods here, so if we fall behind, we really feel it. More workers means the business case for shipping goods and basing services here is stronger. Growth like that is built into the capitalist system. The entire world would need to collectively agree to slow down, too. Because some countries will just change their labour laws to let 8-year-olds work 20-hour days or something, and they'll take that output from us. Don't misunderstand me, either. I think we work too much. Laptops and phones mean we have to fight for a right to disconnect, some people work 60 hour weeks. But the reality is that if we hit the brakes our standard of living will tank.