Australia overhauls visa system as it grapples with worker shortages after strict COVID rules | world news

Australia is overhauling its entire visa and immigration system in a bid to rapidly increase its workforce.

The journal is due out in February.

Since closing its borders during COVID, the country has struggled to find enough skilled and unskilled workers to fill jobs and boost the economy.

After Canada, Australia has the second worst skills shortage among the world’s wealthiest countries.

Beneath the Sydney Opera House, Solotel, a waterfront bar and restaurant, is in need of staff.

Its managing director, Elliot Solomon, said he urgently needed chefs, servers, bartenders and baristas.

“We have a few fine dining restaurants and we can’t open on certain days because we don’t have enough staff,” he said.

Mr Solomon said wages had risen by 25% in a year and servers were averaging around £20 an hour.

Work incentives include £500 sign-up bonuses and half-price food and drink for employees and their friends.

Other restaurants send foreign staff to the country and provide accommodation.

In March, British backpacker Chloe Ankers moved from Manchester to Cairns and now to Sydney.

“There are jobs all over the coast,” she said.

“The salary is incredible, compared to us, there is a big difference.”

With most foreigners preferring the beach to the bush, staff shortages are even worse in remote areas.

Before COVID, 80% of seasonal farm labor came from backpackers.

Three hundred kilometers west of Sydney, in Leeton, tons of oranges are left to rot because there aren’t enough people to pick them.

Orchard owner Frank Mercuri said it was “devastating” with his business losing 140,000 pounds of fruit.

Australians aren’t in these jobs – the unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been in 48 years.

It is a labor market. A National Australia Bank survey found that one in three companies want to hire more people.

In total, almost half a million workers are needed in almost every industry, from hospitality and tourism to construction, technology, agriculture and mining, as well as teachers and nurses .

There is also a severe shortage of tradespeople; mechanics, builders and plumbers – the list goes on.

Auto shop owner Cameron Virtue is under pressure and can’t grow his business. Without enough technicians, he works 70 hours a week.

He said: “I think we need to look overseas more, I generally find the UK-trained technicians far superior to what we have here.”

Mechanic Joel Swain has no regrets swapping North Yorkshire for the summer to Sydney.

He recently returned home to see family and friends and says it was the “final nail in the coffin”.

“You can see that people are not so happy [in the UK] and more and more of my friends are migrating, traveling to Asia and coming to Australia for this life,” he said.

Australia feels it doesn’t need to sell the country to migrants, as it sees itself as the “lifestyle” capital of the world.

However, during the pandemic there was one of the toughest COVID border closures in the world and the previous government told foreign students and backpackers to ‘go home’.

They now face exorbitant international airfares to travel here.

So when it comes to migration, Australia has a lot of challenges and ground to catch up.