How ‘two-speed’ regional job economy is affecting employment in the region

With about a quarter of Fraser Coast youth unemployed, Hervey Bay Chamber of Commerce President Sandra Holebrook has shared her insights into the issue.

Hervey Bay Chamber of Commerce President Sandra Holebrook discusses the employment issues in the region.​

With a 13 per cent unemployment rate across the Fraser Coast, with 24.8 per cent youth unemployment, what’s going wrong?

The Chronicle spoke with Hervey Bay Chamber of Commerce President Sandra Holebrook to get her insights on the issue.

Ms Holebrook said Hervey Bay has a “two-speed job economy”, which was the main problem causing such high unemployment rates.

“We’ve actually got a two-speed job economy at the moment where we’re short of skilled people to do new skilled work or higher skill work that employers are looking for, but when it comes to entry level work and jobs, that probably we have a lot of candidates for, we don’t have enough of those jobs to support the population looking for that work,” Ms Holebrook said.

Although Hervey Bay was “developing to the speed” needed, Ms Holebrook said it would take time.

“That’s going to remain for a while until we build our base businesses up more to help accommodate those people that want to do entry level work,” Ms Holebrook said.

“Like, working at a supermarket ... those are the ones where we just don't have enough to meet the need.”

While high-skilled jobs, where employers are looking for people to be “very job ready” and “already showing most of the skills they're looking for” are struggling to recruit people.

Hervey Bay Chamber of Commerce President Sandra Holebrook.

“They can't find people that fit those roles ... all manufacturing businesses are looking for high-skilled people ... people in trade,” Ms Holebrook said.

And, hospitality “is a weird one”.

“(Hospitality) should be offering entry level jobs, but people are struggling to find people to work there and I don’t have the answer for that ... within the workforce, we’ve still got some JobKeeper and JobSeeker floating around where people just want to be more flexible than employers want,” she said.

“They’re looking for more flexibility in their workforce, which isn’t helping out hospitality and hospitality businesses.”

With hospitality rosters handed out “last-minute” and recruitment mostly casual, the inflexibility makes it difficult for workers to work multiple jobs to secure a full-time wage.

“We do need to reform across the country because it's an issue across the country, but we could start here, we don't have to wait for the rest of the country to change, we could start looking at the way we give rosters out and whether we could do them on a monthly basis rather than weekly,” Ms Holebrook said.

“It is actually about time to give our youth full-time employment.”