The ABS has released information reporting the nature of impacts due to COVID-19 for businesses within Australia. One of the key insights into workforce difficulties that businesses are currently facing is filling job vacancies. Interestingly, the recently released labour forecasts suggested that just under 993,000 people were unemployed as of June, 2020.

Medium businesses were also nearly twice as likely to experience staffing difficulties as compared to small businesses.

Additionally, 88% of businesses reported that they were unable to meet staffing levels with their existing employees. Health and safety, social distancing and affordability of staff were stated as some of the reasons for these staffing barriers.

31% of businesses also reported experiencing issues in negotiating work arrangements with their employees. Changes to employee hours, work locations and rates of pay were revealed to be some of the difficulties.