Aged care workers place in Albo’s top ten needed jobs

The Federal Government has identified the top ten jobs that require a new influx of trained workers in the next five years, an issue they hope to address at next month’s Jobs and Skills Summit.

The top ten professions the Government believe are looking at critical shortages includes: aged and disability carers and Registered Nurses, along with construction managers, early childhood teachers, electricians, chefs, child carers, civil engineering professionals, and software and applications programmers.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told Nine News there has been a shift in what skill sets were needed and the training to be updated to help close these gaps.

“The skills have changed. We need to change the training to match those skills,” he said.

“That is one of the things that the Jobs and Skills Summit is doing.”

Skills Minister Brendan O’Connor said the Government was working with State and Territory counterparts around the country to establish some solutions to the labour market shortages which includes considering a rise to the annual migration intake from 160,000 people to between 180,000 and 200,000.

“Insofar as skilled migration is concerned, we know how important that is to employers. It is not a binary choice,” Minister O’Connor said.

“We do understand how important it is… [we are] working very hard, firstly to unclog the visa application process, so we can accelerate.

“We are engaged in skilled migration pathways but we are very clear it is also about investing in our own work force.”

On Monday, the Australian Council of Trade Unions supported a boost to migration to fill skill gaps on the condition domestic workers are first offered improved wages and other benefits.

To help plug these skills gaps, the Government also plans to send more than 450,000 people to TAFE for free.

Mr Albanese has already said the Government supported the notion of allowing pensioners to do more paid work without losing benefits and would consider this policy as part of its response to the labour crisis.

Next month’s Jobs and Skills Summit will be held in Canberra next week on September 1 – 2.