With unemployment at around 4% it's not a skills shortage, it's a people shortage.
Like all statistics the unemployment figure such as today's of around 4% does not show the entire picture but is one that politicians love to boast about.
You can bend anything to your way of spin if you want to.Is the government helping by education and other means to put Australians in the jobs that matter or that they really want.
A friend of mine who lives in NSW has a boy that wants to be a diesel mechanic.His son has to travel something like 400 km's to go to TAFE,spend a week or two then travel 400 km's back home to work where his apprenticeship is located.
He does not live out the back of Bourke but on the coast not far from the Queensland border not far from major regional centres.It is insane that there is no TAFE college closer than that.However,cost cutting from successive governments have put paid to that.
Perhaps it is also time we look at the financial requirments for Uni both from the students side and of the uni's operational side.The uni's are allowing students to have a lower HSC pass mark if they pay up front because they need the money and then cashed up overseas students grab a spot that could have gone to an Australian.
Population does have an impact but education and Government assistance has a bigger impact.With Australian airlines sending aircraft overseas for anything from maintenance to a spray of paint it is not difficult to see the demand for trades and skilled people in Australia diminishing.
The 457 Visa solution is short term but another approach is needed for the longer term.
PAF,maybe another solution is to encourage people to have more children if we have a people shortage.
Other countries look 20 years or more down the track but all our politicians seem to do is look no further than the next election.