Sydney man gets 140 applications for job, none from Australia: ‘All from India, Pakistan'
The 66-year-old butcher and businessman has warned that his predicament highlights the growing shortage of trained young tradespeople in Australia. Wright says it indicates a 'perfect storm for businesses' amid rising wages and cost-of-living pressures.
The Sydney-based owner of Alexandria's Clover Valley Meat Company and Wrights The Butchers says 'It's not a matter of money'.
'We have [had a decades-long] drain on people that have not picked up the trade, this is what we're suffering now.'
No luck finding a candidate
Clayton Wright is 'desperate' for more employees, so much so that he is spending $1,100 per month advertising a position on job-hunting website Seek.
Despite having received over 140 applications, he is unable to fill the position as all the applications are from overseas.
'We've had 140 applications and not one was from Australia,' he said. 'They were from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, South America.'
Wright says that all the applicants are looking for ways to enter Australia. Some can barely communicate in English, others have no experience in the butchering industry.
Aside from some applicants who had experience in halal slaughter, the other applicants 'had virtually no qualifications at all' and 'most were battling to speak English'.
'They all want a sponsorship,' said the Australian businessman. 'This happened years ago in the chef industry, where chef was an easy entry into Australia so all these people came and did a chef's course. The problem is that you have no butchers, so if you bring people in from overseas you have no one to train them.'
The business lobby agrees that Australia is facing a skill shortage, and that Wright is not alone in experiencing this.
'We are hearing from business owners across the state who are advertising the same job two, three, even five times and still coming up empty,' said Daniel Hunter, chief executive of Business NSW.
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