The National Skills Commission (NSC) has released its preliminary findings on the prevalence of retention difficulty amongst employers, showing that 9% of employers had difficulty retaining
staff in the previous 3 months.

In general, retention difficulty is more prevalent in more remote areas of Australia. Remote and Very Remote Australia (17%) had the highest proportion of employers experiencing retention difficulty, followed by Outer Regional Australia (12%). Only 7% of employers in Major Cities of Australia reported having retention difficulty.

Of the reported industries, Accommodation and Food Services had the highest proportion (18%) of employers experiencing retention difficulty, followed by Construction and Health Care and Social Assistance (both 12%). The Professional, Scientific and Technical Services industry had the lowest proportion of retention difficulty (5%).

The ‘nature of the work’ was the leading reason, reported by 38% of employers who had retention difficulty. More than half of employers in Accommodation and Food Services and
Health Care and Social Assistance who had retention difficulty said that it was due to the ‘nature of the work’.

Overall, in July 2021, 45% of employers surveyed as part of the Recruitment Experiences and Outlook Survey were recruiting or had recruited in the past month, a 4 percentage point
decrease on June 2021.

Recruitment difficulty has increased by two percentage points, with 52% of recruiting employers reporting they experienced difficulty filling their vacancies.

The proportion of employers expecting to increase staffing levels dropped slightly but remains relatively strong, with 19% of employers surveyed expecting to increase their staffing levels in
the next 3 months.

The dashboards bring together a range of data in the one place for the first time to provide a comprehensive picture of how a region’s jobs market is performing. It will allow users to quickly find key labour market data for their area of interest.

Updated monthly, the dashboards include insights on:

• how many people are employed and unemployed in a region
• workforce participation rates
• youth unemployment
• number of online job ads by occupation and qualification levels
• jobactive caseload data
• largest employing industries and employers’ future staffing expectations (state and territory level only).