NSW jobs: Healthcare, trade and hospitality hiring for roles post-COVID

We can reveal the 90,000 jobs, by region, that are waiting to be filled as the Australian employment market slowly recovers from the shock of COVID-19. USE OUR SEARCH TOOL

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THE road to economic recovery is under construction and being lead by healthcare and our tradies.

Today we can reveal the 90,000 jobs, by region, that are waiting to be filled as the Australian employment market slowly recovers from the shock of COVID-19.

Hospitality hiring is also making a comeback, although demand in the travel industry remains very low.

Figures from job site Adzuna last week revealed New South Wales’ largest employing sectors were healthcare and nursing (4845 available roles), trades and construction (2538), information technology (2123) and accounting and finance (1819).

Adzuna country manager for Australia and New Zealand Tejas Deshpande said job ad numbers were growing.

“In some states, demand for workers has returned to normal levels, replacing those jobs that were lost due to COVID – but we need more new jobs to be created,” he said.

“While the virus is a threat, any return to normal is an achievement right now.”

Watch our special Jobs 360 investigation in the video above.

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Mr Deshpande said there had been a particular increase in hospitality and catering hiring in New South Wales, Queensland and Canberra, as more and more restaurants reopened.

The travel industry, however, was yet to rebound.

Last week, there were fewer than 50 travel jobs advertised across the whole country.

Hays regional director Eliza Kirkby said jobseekers were becoming more flexible and open-minded when looking for work.

They were willing to apply in different industries and less central locations.

“We recently recruited a number of roles for an abattoir and we were able to find candidates that wouldn’t have previously considered working in that environment,” she said.

“We are seeing candidates that were unprepared to consider temp roles previously, for the first time in their careers are open to temp work.

“We are seeing a much larger appetite of candidates being open to relocation or commuting longer distances.”

Ms Kirkby said there had been an increase in hiring in some regional areas, particularly off the back of increased tourist numbers as people travelled within their own states to comply with border restrictions.

“We are also seeing high demand for experienced professionals in resources and mining, healthcare, defence, IT, construction, trades and labour, office support, and accountancy and finance,” she said.

“In Victoria in particular, we are certainly seeing a stronger demand in regional centres than in metropolitan Melbourne.”

Lequesha Unsworth who lost her job during COVID so retrained to become a disability support worker, making house visits to people with disabilities. Picture: Richard Dobson

‘WITHOUT A FREE COURSE I WOULDN’T HAVE WORK’

Terrigal’s Lequesha Unsworth had been working in personal training and fitness for about three years when COVID-19 hit and threw her career into chaos.

Gyms were ordered to close at the end of March and Ms Unsworth, 26, was not eligible for JobKeeper, which required workers to have been employed for at least 12 months.

“We realised I was one month short of being able to get JobKeeper, which was devastating,” she said.

“It made me feel lost, a little bit stressed and made me think ‘what am I going to do next?’

“I still had PT clients (outside of the gym) but then they also stopped coming because it was just getting too risky.”

Ms Unsworth began looking for jobs elsewhere but did not have any luck.

“We couldn’t just wait (for the gym to reopen), there was a mortgage to pay,” she said.

“I was looking on SEEK to see if anyone was hiring but I knew it was going to be tough to get in anywhere.”

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That was when Ms Unsworth came across Generation Australia’s six-week disability support worker course, which is free for eligible applicants thanks to NSW Government funding.

“I knew at the end that Generation organised an interview day where they get employers from different companies together and we do group interviews (but) I branched out on my own and applied for a few jobs,” she said.

“I’ve been with Brighter Access for about a month and a half.”

Ms Unsworth believed there should be more free courses available to help out people who have lost work during the pandemic.

“Especially in such a tough year like this where so many people are having so much financial difficulty or just don’t know where to go or just can’t go back to work, having that opportunity to step out and change their career with a course that is free is really going to help them upskill, step out of their comfort zone and feel that confidence to make that change,” she said.

“Without this course, I wouldn’t be in the job I am today and could be struggling and picking up random work to pay bills.

“I am so happy where I am and that I have achieved something positive during such a negative, horrible year.”

JOBS 360 is a special News Corp roundtable discussion on Australia’s jobs crisis.

OPTIMISTIC AUSSIES UPSKILLING FOR JOB SECURITY

There is greater optimism than pessimism about the employment outlook, according to a major national survey that also reveals a third of Australians are upskilling to increase their job security or work prospects.

Another key finding was just how adaptable most workers are with two-thirds of respondents willing to change industry if required and more than half prepared to move for a job.

The insights emerge from an exclusive jobs study among 1887 Australian adults by leading pollsters YouGov following last week’s federal budget. YouGov research director Julie Harris said the survey showed most people considered tax cuts for workers to be best way to get the job market back on track.

However, Ms Harris added, workers who felt more nervous about their employment than a year ago – and that’s nearly half the population – were less likely to spend any windfall from Canberra.

“And that’s a real issue for the recovery, with the way the Morrison government has outlaid money through tax cuts,” she said.

While 48 per cent of people felt less secure in their job than 12 months earlier, 40 per cent believed they were just as safe. And one in 10 had an increased sense of confidence.

Ms Harris said there was positivity among many Australians that the nation would recover from COVID-19.

“Four in 10 are saying it’s tough right now but we’ll get back on track – a level of optimism is definitely there,” she said. “But you’ve still got a third – and that’s a massive amount of people – who are pessimistic.”

Across the generations, Millennial and Generation X workers were most optimistic about the employment outlook, while Baby Boomers were less hopeful.

Men were more positive than women, as were people who are married when compared to singles.

In NSW, more people were slightly more optimistic than the national average.

In Victoria, understandably, people were less optimistic than the national average.

In South Australia, people were less optimistic than the national average.

In the Sunshine State, people were slightly more optimistic than the national average.

Ms Harris said the poll demonstrated that “Australians are very adaptable”. This is borne out by the finding that 67 per cent of Australians who are able to work were prepared to switch to another sector of the economy. And 56 per cent were willing to move within their city (24 per cent), state (13 per cent) or the nation (19 per cent) for a new job.

Ms Harris said it was important for policymakers “to look at who was willing” to move.

Women were more likely to say they would not be prepared to change. “That might be a structural issue such as that they can’t get childcare,” Ms Harris said.

People from NSW were least prepared (16 per cent) to move interstate, compared to 21 per cent of Victorians, 22 per cent of Queenslanders and 17 per cent of South Australians.

Nationally, 17 per cent of respondents said that since the pandemic began they had undertaken career-oriented training or learned new skills to improve their job security and another 16 per cent said they were about to.

Fifty-five per cent of workers reported they had not lost their job or had their hours cut. But 17 per cent said they had been made unemployed and 28 per cent are getting less work now than they were pre-COVID.

Originally published as NSW jobs: Healthcare, trade and hospitality hiring for roles post-COVID