Just because the results aren’t surprising, doesn’t make them less depressing.
The annual Occupational Shortage List is out and 55 professions, many of them health related, remain in “persistent shortage”.
Aged and disability carer is one of the five largest occupations in shortage and has been so since 2021. Every state is affected.
“The reasons for persistent shortages are likely to be multifaceted,” said the report’s authors.
“They include population ageing, technology advances, and other impacts of structural changes in the labour market, such as constraints in the supply of qualified and experienced workers, working conditions and pay, and government policies and regulations.”
GP is the other health profession in the top 20 occupations in persistent shortage and, again, has been so since 2021. If anything, the situation has become worse.
In 2021, general practice was experiencing “regional shortages” in every state and no shortage at all in the ACT. But every year since, every state and territory has experienced jurisdiction-wide shortages of GPs.
The healthcare and social assistance industry ranks third – behind construction and mining – in the list of workforce shortage pressures.
“The results … align with the expected impacts of population ageing and the flow on increasing demand for health services,” said the authors.
Other health professions in shortage include dermatologists, cardiologists, clinical psychologists, intensive care specialists (outside NSW and the Northern Territory), diagnostic radiographers, radiation therapists, medical oncologists, nurse practitioners, nurse educators, neurologists, neurosurgeons, orthopods, OB/GYNs, paediatricians and paediatric surgeons, ENTs, physiotherapists, psychiatrists (outside NSW), renal specialists, registered nurses, rheumatologists, speech pathologists, general physicians, urologists (outside NSW) and vascular surgeons.
The full report is available here.