The hospitality jobs employers are struggling to fill despite rising COVID-19 unemployment

While many Australians have recently found themselves out of a job, and the hospitality industry has been hit particularly hard, employers are struggling to fill some roles.

CEO and founder of Barcats, a hospitality recruitment network, Jeffrey Williams, said there are certainly openings available.

“We’re certainly seeing a real gap, certainly in the skilled labor end of town. Chef roles, in particular, we’ve seen a huge amount of people leave the country over the last six to eight weeks,” he told 3AW’s Dee Dee.

“We estimate about 100,000 people have left the country who were fulfilling those sort of management roles, chef roles.

“We’ve certainly also had roughly that same sort of number of people that were backpacking around the country that now aren’t doing that.

“We’d expect Australians to be jumping at the opportunity but we’re not seeing that.”

But Mr Williams said some roles, particularly those which don’t require specific skills, are highly competitive.

“General bar jobs will have 160 or 200 applicants,” he said.

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