An aging workforce

As I am involved in training, I deal with the Department of Training and Workforce Development, a state government department concerned with identifying workforce development issues and trends to improve productivity for Western Australia.

Identifying skills gaps is important so as to forecast potential skills shortfalls to develop training strategies to not only provide opportunities for West Australians, such strategies, if implemented should negate the requirement to import costly overseas knowledge and skills so the state may prosper.

One of the identified issues is the aging workforce, during the last boom many older participants stepped up to fill the skills gap, make some extraordinary money and boost their retirement accounts. However, in the lean period when workers were laid off during the bust, this group reached retirement age and duly retired.

The knowledge and skills were not harnessed; younger worker opportunities were not available as training places plummeted as apprentices, trainees and newly certified tradespeople were laid off to save costs. Generally, an engineering based apprenticeship takes four years, that's a long lag period when the economy turns around.

Employers poorly forecast the last boom and then laid off staff during the bust. Now they have been slow to react to the slight upturn and training has not increased to the required levels. Feedback from industry and employer meetings is not positive, they know the next upturn is approaching and have now realised that they are woefully unprepared so the cycle repeats itself.