The Business Voice survey is designed to capture a point-in-time assessment of business sentiment.

It will provide a regular, point-in-time snapshot of the issues impacting Victorian businesses and provide insights into how they can be addressed.

In the first survey, findings were canvassed from 900 respondents to gain an insight on areas such as business type, hiring patters and barries, and growth outlook.

Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chief Executive Paul Guerra said: “The Victorian Chamber is delighted to launch our Business Voice survey report.

“Our first survey shows that the current worker and skills shortage crisis is impacting business of all sizes across all industries. What we are seeing is a situation where we have more jobs available than workers to fill them and this is resulting in unusual circumstances where individuals are able to be more selective in terms of workplace environment and salary expectations.

Hiring insights

Up to 63 per cent of small businesses, 93 per cent of medium sized businesses and 90 per cent of large businesses are looking to hire new staff within the next two months.

Industries most desperate for workers include mining (83 per cent), manufacturing (66 per cent), utilities services (85 per cent), accommodation and food services (75 per cent), and transport, postal and warehousing (71 per cent).

Skilled and unskilled demand

Skilled workers remain in high demand in professional, scientific and technical services with 75 per cent of businesses seeking workers in this field preferring skilled applicants compared with 23 per cent who would consider individual applicants across multiple positions.

The same applies to the utilities sector (82 per cent skilled applicant preference), financial and insurance services (79 per cent) and administrative and support services (83 per cent) .

A number of sectors would consider unskilled applicants for positions, or individuals of mixed skills backgrounds who can cover multiple positions. These include retail, accommodation and food services, public administration and safety, the arts and recreation services.

Barriers to hiring

The biggest barriers to hiring new staff in business include high wage expectations from the workforce (25 per cent), insufficient applicants for skilled roles (17 per cent), skills gaps in the workforce (17 per cent) and insufficient applicants for entry level roles (14 per cent).

Growth outlook

55 per cent of businesses have no plans to make a capital investment in their business in the next two months.

62 per cent of businesses believe they will experience revenue growth across the next 12 months, and 30 per cent believe they will remain stable.

The Victorian Chamber continues to advocate on behalf of our members for state and federal governments to address the issue of skills and worker shortages across all industries, and the rising expectations from cost-of-living increases.

Mr Guerra said: “When business is doing well, Victoria is also doing well, and we need to do what we can to ensure they have the support to keep their operations going, drive our state’s economy and keep us moving forward.

“Importantly, it shows the demand to hire, which should be a good sign for the Victorian economic outlook.”