It has been a busy couple of weeks for Jobs and Skills Australia, with another important report released.
The “Occupation Shortage Report – June 2025” looks at the pressures employers face in filling job vacancies.
It shows that the “national vacancy fill rate” (that is, the percentage of advertised vacancies that are filled by employers) rose to 70.6% – an improvement on the 61.4% level two years earlier. This is not just a reflection of changes in the wider labour market (ie the slight rise in the unemployment rate since June 2023) but JSA’s research also shows that “suitable applicants per vacancy increased slightly over the last quarter and the last 12 months.”
While there remains a gap between the vacancy fill rates in the cities and rural areas, in the June 2025 quarter “the difference in fill rates between the two areas reduced to 6.5 percentage points.”
When looked at by occupation “skill level” – there was one level (Skill Level 3) where employers found it much harder to find enough applicants for the jobs they had advertised and to find suitable applicants.
Skill Level 3 covers AQF Certificate IV and AQF Certificate III occupations where the qualification includes at least two years of on-the-job training (ie traditional apprentices).
For these VET-related occupations at Skill Level 3 the vacancy fill rate was just 55.1% (almost 20% lower than for the other three skill levels which were all above 70%).
Employers recruiting for Skill Level 3 occupations had an average of just 17.7 applicants for each job vacancy compared to between 27.1 and 32.5 at the other skill levels.
Employers identified only 5 qualified applicants per vacancy for Skill Level 3 roles and just 2.4 suitable applicants – approximately half as many as for jobs at other skill levels.
While VET providers cannot unilaterally increase training places in many apprenticeship roles (they are frequently government-funded and require employers to be willing to take on apprentices), there are no such limits on increasing enrolments in most Certificate IV qualifications.
The JSA research also shows that there is more work for VET to do to improve the number of Community and Personal Service Workers and Machinery Operators and Drivers graduating – and it is likely that across all VET graduates the more the sector can do to ensure graduates have the soft skills necessary (to build relationships, work in teams, manage change and solve problems) this will assist them in the recruitment process and help reduce the suitability gap.
