Coast jobs dry up

A $100,000 a year job is going begging on the Sunshine Coast while recruitment specialists describe the shortage of general vacancies as the worst they have seen.

The unfillable tax specialist's position is one of several vacancies that recruitment agencies are struggling to fill at the same time as they have no jobs to offer many other willing workers.

The most recent figures available for the Coast put the region's unemployment rate at 5.5% in December, down from 6% the previous quarter, but still above the national figure of 5.1% released last week.

The number of people unemployed on the Sunshine Coast seesawed throughout last year before dropping at the end of the year.

Curiously, the rates of employment and unemployment both dropped in December.

Chris Whisson, director of the East Coast Human Resources Group, said it was difficult to draw conclusions from the figures, which he said did not accurately portray the sombre job market. He said vacancy rates were as quiet as he had seen them in nearly 20 years of recruiting.

"I've been operating on the Sunshine Coast since 1993 and these are among the most difficult times," he said.

"For a large number of local workers, administrative workers, they can't find jobs. They tell us the jobs don't exist."

New Staff Solutions director Peta Simpson said the market was "very quiet."

"There are thousands of people in our community who can't put food on the table, and there's nothing to give them any hope of things changing any time soon," she said.

Mr Whisson said the region's unemployment figures also did not take into account the number of people under-employed in a workforce becoming increasingly part-time and casual as employers sought to cut costs by cutting their employees' hours.

"They say employment is growing but I believe general working hours are falling," he said.

Although many people are looking for work, there are some positions which recruitment agencies are having difficulty filling.

East Coast has not been able to turn up a suitable applicant for a tax specialist's position at $100,000 a year, despite advertising as far away as Toowoomba and Brisbane.

New Staff Solutions has been unable to fill a solicitor's position and could not put forward a suitable applicant for a legal secretary's position for two weeks.

"That same job two years ago, we would have had trouble choosing someone and would have had it filled in a week," Ms Simpson said.

Mr Whisson said employees who were in stable work were also unlikely to move in the current climate, creating difficulties in filling positions. Ms Simpson said the Sunshine Coast was missing out on "new blood" because people did not have the confidence to move to the region.

Many were also moving away to find work, which she believed would create long-term problems for the Coast.

"People say 'don't worry, when the economy moves again, the jobs will come back and so will the people'. But people in their late 20s-early 30s, they move, meet someone get married, the kids are in school, they don't want to move."

Janine Hill, Sunshine Cosat Daily reports

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