Australian restaurant industry set to suffer shortages of up to 120,000

Australia’s largest job search company, Indeed, has warned that the Australian restaurant industry is ‘at risk’ after Peter Dutton’s 457 visa crackdown and may suffer a shortage of up to 120,000 people in the next 10 years.

According to a Sydney Morning Herald report, there has been a 10 percent drop on searches on job websites almost instantaneously after the government announced its crackdown on foreign workers. The company’s spokesperson said that of the 4 million job searches during 2017, the greatest interest in jobs in the Australian hospitality industry came from Britain, not from non-English speaking countries. The company had detected a 78 percent increase in searches for Australian hospitality roles but that was now being undermined by the abolition of the 457 scheme.

According to the Department of Immigration, as of September, there were 96,000 foreign workers in Australia with about a quarter from India, nearly 20 percent from Britain and 6 percent from China.