Tight labour market has Tamworth businesses coming up empty in search for staff

The mismatch between the skills employers need and what's on offer in the jobless pool has some businesses training unskilled workers, and others playing the waiting game.

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Bartender Andrea Dissinger is feeling under the pump in a short-staffed workplace.

The 21-year-old said she's always getting the "s***ty shifts" and hasn't had a weekend off since last August.

She said the reason the popular pub she works at, The Tudor Hotel, has less staff than it needs is because people are more interested in knocking off.

"I personally think it's because people just don't want to work," she said.

"We have job providers always calling us about people, but not one of them usually shows up."

Wild West Ink in the Tamworth CBD has been searching for another tattooist and piercer for three or four months.

Owner Grant Humphreys said despite more bodies behind the piercing chairs allowing for more service and additional income, he has no choice but to be selective.

"In our industry, qualifications are very specific," he said.

"It's not a retail style job, it's much different.

"So you really need to get the right people with the right mindset."

Restaurateur Bikash Sapkota has had to delay the opening of his second restaurant Namaste Nepal while he's been training his kitchen staff.

But the struggle to get skilled staff has been affecting his established business too.

He pasted a piece of paper calling for workers in the front door of Blue Flame Modern Indian Cuisine, but after two weeks the restaurant hadn't even received a single resume.

"I don't know why," he said.

"Maybe they don't want to work in hospitality field, or maybe they think it's a different thing so they don't have knowledge."

Opening the restaurant before it has enough staff is a risk he's not willing to take.

"If I can't give a good service at that time then they won't be coming back again."

Business owner Anthony Daniel said employees had quit working in Sonny's Café after just one shift, telling him the job was too hard - which he said wasn't valid.

It's left him feeling people are reluctant to want to work.

"We feel like a lot of the Australian workers have been slacking off unfortunately, and that could be as a result of the COVID handouts and so on," he said.

He said in the nine months since he took over, the café had hit the ceiling of what it can achieve while unable to attract more staff.

"If someone does call in sick, it does put a strain on the business," he said.

"We'd rather have a little bit more rotation."

He works seven days a week and although more staff might allow him to start later, it's not his own workload that worries him.

"More employees wouldn't necessarily mean I would be more likely to take a day off," he said.

"But it would allow me to expand my business a little bit further than where it has gone.

"I really want to take it to one more step."

The café hasn't been able to hire an experienced barista or cook so his staff have needed bit by bit training.

"That's part of the reason we're in the business seven days a week," he said.

"To make sure that our customers get a quality and repeatable and consistent line item.

"So it's not one day it's good, next day it's not good."

The unemployment rate in June was at its lowest since 1974, the Australian Bureau of Statistics found.

Last month there was almost the same number of unemployed people - 494,000 - as job vacancies recorded in May at 480,000.

The tough competition has unlucky businesses losing steam and staff feeling the pressure of a heavy workload.

The first 12 months of a business can be its hardest, Tamworth Business Chamber president Steph Cameron said.

"If you couple that with being unable to find good, reliable staff, it would make it really, really, really difficult," she said.

She said the reason for the state of the labour market includes the inability to access staff from overseas, and that COVID could have been the catalyst for people to consider changing careers.

She said dealing with crisis situations like drought, bushfire, flood and the pandemic could have taken a toll on people's desire to work.

"I think people are finding it difficult to cope," she said.

"The stress of dealing with crisis situations all the time, even if it's not your own, it might be your family on the coast.

"I think that can wear people down and it becomes difficult."

She said some of the hardest hit industries during COVID are finding it difficult to encourage staff back to work.

"If you can't find good staff what happens is you miss opportunities," she said.

"You might not put the best foot forward that you'd like to.

"And at the end of the day, the staff that you do have work twice as hard to get the job done and over time, that's not sustainable."

Short staffing across the city doesn't necessarily mean that people don't want to work, Junior Business Chamber chair Shonia Poole said, rather that they have too many options.

"I think that people who do want to work and have passion in their industries are already working in their industries," she said.

"If they're not comfortable in one business, they'll just move to another one, because they will get a job wherever they turn, if they're skilled and know what they're doing.

"Staff retention is really difficult, because the market knows that it's flooded - they can just jump up and move to another job quite easily."

The 25-year-old said staffing problems across the city had been discussed by the junior chamber, but she faced it daily at work with accounting firm Bell Partners.

Her clients in hospitality include bowling clubs, coffee shops and a national franchise.

"They feel really comfortable in telling me that their pain point at the moment is staff shortages," she said.

"Particularly for smaller cafes around town, it's really difficult for them to not only get staff but when they get those staff, to retain good people.

"There's an overwhelming amount of jobs available and just not enough bodies to fill them, so it's a very competitive market at the moment."

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