Work in Progress
Skills shortages: prevalence, causes, remedies and consequences for Australian businesses
Summary
- Item:
- 10447
- Title:
- Skills shortages: prevalence, causes, remedies and consequences for Australian businesses
- Type:
- Managed research project
- Project no:
- NR10208
- Status:
- Finished
- Date commenced:
- 20 August 2010
- Contact:
- Joanne Hargreaves
- phone: 08 8230 8678
- email: joanne.hargreaves@ncver.edu.au
- Principal researcher:
- Josh Healy
- National Insitute of Labour Studies, Flinders University
Purpose
The study will answer a series of inter-related questions about the nature of skill shortages in the Australian labour market of 2004-05. The research aims are to:
a) Measure the incidence of skill shortages, and document where shortages existed by business size, main industry and occupations, in 2004-05.
b) Investigate the causes of shortages. A particular focus of this work would be on whether business ascribe responsibility for shortages to deficiencies in the training of job applicants, or to other obstacles, such as the location of the business or its inability to pay higher wages. This information is highly relevant to the VET system, because not all shortages are best dealt with through a training response.
c) Describe the responses that businesses take to perceived skill shortages. A particular issue is whether businesses use training to help alleviate skill shortages, or whether they favour other responses, such as asking current workers to increase their hours or cutting back on production.
d) Evaluate the short-term consequences of skill shortages for indicators of business performance, such as employment and profitability.
Approach
Quantitative
Research questions
• How common are perceived skills shortages?
• What are the attributes of businesses that experience shortages?
• What reasons do businesses give for the existence of shortages?
• What actions are most frequently taken to correct shortages?
• What are the most prominent reported performance indicators?
• How are they associated with skill shortages?
• What are the most prominent measured (ATO) performance indicators?
• How are they associated with skill shortages?
Methodology
• The data source for the research will be the ABS Business Longitudinal Database (BLD). The BLD is a new addition to the ABS collection that is designed to explore the factors influencing business performance over time. The data follows a panel of approximately three thousand small to medium-sized businesses (0 to 200 employees) over a three-year period.
• The first part of the study involves univariate and bivariate descriptive analyses of the BLD data to answer the above research questions.
• The second part of the study would estimate the incidence and the consequences of skill shortages in a multivariate framework.
Organisations
The National Institute of Labour Studies (NILS) is one of Australia’s leading independent research centres. Operating from Flinders University, NILS has been serving government agencies at national and State level, overseas governments, large companies and other groups for over 30 years. NILS is multidisciplinary. The staff has expertise in economics, econometrics, sociology, industrial relations, demography and psychology. This multidisciplinary character provides NILS with a rich and flexible analytical capacity, encompassing the design and administration of surveys, rigorous quantitative analysis of secondary data, outstanding skills in qualitative methods, such as focus groups and interviews, and the capacity to generate new insights and questions from sophisticated literature reviews. The remit of NILS is labour studies, broadly defined. They undertake research on a diverse array of topics, including skills, skill formation and training outcomes, the youth labour market, workforce planning in prominent industries (e.g., mining), immigration, work and health, minimum wages, and particular workforces (e.g., health care, aged care and community services). NILS review trends and developments in the Australian labour market and demographics, and place these in an international context. In addition to commissioned projects, NILS staff undertakes independent scholarly research, which continually refreshes and deepens our understanding of contemporary labour market issues. The Australian Bulletin of Labour, a long-standing journal for research in economics, industrial relations and social policy, is edited and published at NILS and makes a substantial contribution to contemporary debates in the broad field of labour studies.
