New Pandemic - Covid Malaise !

I call it the Covid Malaise - it is alive & well !

Staff shortages everywhere - across all industries. I get the lack of backpackers - but it’s got to be more than that

And the amount of people around at the moment with colds, flu or covid I'm amazed anyone is working.  We are covid central out here.  Even my local doctors had to shut down because someone came in and spread it.  What happened to testing if you had any cold like symtoms.  I think everyone is giving that a miss now also so covid is just going around and around.  And yes lots of people get away with a mild case but I've found three others like myself who took over two months to get any get up and go again. 

So hard to do a job when all you can do is sleep.

Re Qantas - Joyce should have moved on years ago. 

Most shareholders are ignorant and short-sighted. They see recovery in share price over last 2 years and are happy. But totally agree that Joyce is trashing it but he doesn't care as he is out of there very soon and has accumulated so much in salary and bonuses over the years. The crash and shareholders dismay will occur after he is gone. Just like the energy 'crisis' we are now having which happened as soon as Morrison government were booted out.

 good on you, slowdown.  Life experiences and family matter more than accumulating possessions and money.

 

Maybe so...but that's not why there are labour shortages.

Those losses aren't evenly distributed.  It's unrealistic to expect that elders, people doing care work for kids, or people who don't live in or near the agricultural areas will travel to them to start doing those jobs to make up for the one Tasmania of people who are gone.  Retail, restaurants, and the hospitality sector are largely staffed by women, who were forced to leave to do care work.  Retirements and burnout are more mixed.  Either way, the dead won't come back to life, the disabled won't become well, the immigrants still aren't there, little kids and fragile elders still need care, and the people whose hearts and minds and cognitive function were damaged by this stupid awful horking plague won't go back to the places that damaged them.

This isn't just an Australian thing.  In the USA, where good numbers are easier to come by, if you count the dead, the disabled by long Covid, seniors forced into early retirement, (mostly) women forced out of the paid workforce to do care work, and the immigrants who didn't come, that country has lost somewhere between one New Zealand and one Victoria from its working-age population in only 2 years.  In the UK, which has the best count of any country in the world of who is suffering from Long Covid, up to 2 M people are living with long Covid, in a country of 67 M people.  If half of those people are too disabled to be in the paid workforce, that's 1.5% of the country's entire population, not just working age.

This kind of loss to the working-age population in such a short time frame is unprecedented outside of warfare.

Even aside from "too hard, too far, don't like the hours," there's no way that Australians born in Australia would be able to make up for the number of backpackers/students/working holiday-makers.  There are just too many people who are gone.

There's another element to why Australians born in Australia (ABIA, b/c I don't want to keep typing that) aren't taking harvesting and hospitality work....there are just fewer young people in the age bracket who normally take those jobs.  Per Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016 numbers, only 12% of Australians are between 15-24, the age group who would do summer picking or have a gap year.  For whatever reason, there was a birth dearth in about 2000-2003, and that relatively small age cohort are now in their late teens and early 20s.

Once again, chasing the idea of "people don't want to work" falls apart when confronted with the reality that the people just aren't there (or aren't there anymore).

 I feel sorry for long covid sufferers.  6 weeks was long enough to feel so drained.  I could still work as I only have to do a couple of hours a day to get to my hours for a fortnight and could go to bed and sleep afterwards but a nurse of cabby or train driver or tradie can't do that.  I had the brain not working for three days and panic set in.  What do those who still have that symtom do?

You only have to see our world is still straining.  Not just Australia.

The way i see it is pretty simple. Nearly every industry still seems to be struggling - & in recovery mode. Certainly Retail, certainly local Tourism, certainly Hospitality - so if all these industries are struggling below pre-pandemic levels - why are we seeing so much staff shortages ? Now why I accept Kimberley & yourself make fair points as to why (sickness/ carers / backpackers/ people leaving the country) I question if there has to be more to it. I have seen very few folk suffering this long-term Covid. My feeling is many an employee has been disillusioned during the Covid period - & now lack the commitment that they may have previously had. I mean i find it hard to cop that 30% of the airline industry staff are either covid crook or covid carers. They are certainly not backpackers. And that industry might be highlighting what i'm trying to say across the board - a lot of employees who now see their managements as Christmas puddings who have shafted them over the period - & will look at opportunities to not work - something they wouldn't have done in the past.