![Barney Glover at Friday's University of Newcastle function. Image supplied Barney Glover at Friday's University of Newcastle function. Image supplied](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/TFWurqJd3WWgt5tunziPf4/9d59bfc1-fb65-4f18-bc65-6389c52d4319.jpg/r0_1876_4912_5106_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
The head of Jobs and Skills Australia says schools must start steering more students into the jobs the nation will need in coming decades.
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JSA commissioner Barney Glover told a University of Newcastle forum on Friday that Australia faced a "mismatch" between the workforce being produced and the skills needed to fill massive projected demand for tradespeople, technicians and care workers.
"Are we producing the right workforce for the sort of economy we need in Australia over the next decade?" Professor Glover said.
"If we're going to build 1.2 million new dwellings in Australia and Treasury have built that into their forecasts ... there's a mismatch between the workforce we need to achieve that domestically and the occupational outcomes that our projections are showing."
Professor Glover, a former University of Newcastle deputy vice-chancellor, said the Hunter would need thousands of workers to build the clean energy infrastructure required by a net zero economy.
"Construction is going to be huge with net zero, because a lot of the jobs over the next 10 years are going to be in the construction phase of net zero, whether it's offshore wind or onshore facilities, whether it's new transmission lines or wind or solar power generation," he said.
"Whatever it is we're going to need a very substantial construction phase."
We have to influence what's happening in schools, the careers advice for young people.
- Professor Barney Glover
But he said feeding that demand would require a change in the "educational profile" of young people entering post-school training and education.
"If that education profile isn't right, it feeds into our models and shows that we have some growth in the trades and technicians, a big growth in the professionals and the service and care industries, all very important, but they don't build houses.
"We need our engineers, our engineering draughtspeople, our trade qualifications, our electricians, our carpenters, our fitters and turners, our welders, we need them in numbers never seen before.
"If we don't realign that educational profile, it's as big an issue for the Hunter as elsewhere in Australia, we will never hit these targets, then you'll be relying on skilled migration.
"We have to influence what's happening in schools, the careers advice for young people, to change the dynamics around the educational profile of young people entering post-secondary education."
Professor Glover said the vast majority of jobs of the future would require education and training beyond school.
"One thing is abundantly clear, 70 per cent of all new jobs right now require post-secondary, tertiary, education. Within 10 years it will be 92 per cent," he said.
"To go from 70 to 92 is a huge uplift in the qualifications of young people, and we've got to get that educational profile right."
Professor Glover was part of a panel discussion organised by the University of Newcastle's Institute for Regional Futures, which last month published research showing more than 70 per cent of the Hunter workforce was willing to retrain to fill future job gaps.
The region is facing a structural shift away from coalmining and coal power generation, industries which employ an estimated 51,000 people directly or indirectly in the supply chain.
A clean-energy economy will require relatively few workers post-construction, but Professor Glover said it was "overly simplistic" to suggest one industry alone would replace fossil-fuel jobs.
"We're in a dynamic labour market change. There's no doubt about it," he told the Newcastle Herald.
"If you narrowly look at energy sector to energy sector, then you can see more automation, more technology, less labour-intensive compared to existing technologies, but there are new opportunities that will arise as well.
"Hunter, Newcastle has been incredibly resilient as an employment region in Australia, and I don't see any reason to doubt that that will continue."
He said the JSA, which supplies data and advice to the federal government, had recorded job growth in the Hunter care and construction sectors along with net inward migration, including in the 25- to 44-year-old age group.
"That gives me confidence you're not so narrowly focused," he said.
"I think we've got confidence in the breadth of the economy, that it will manage that transition."
Professor Glover said during the panel discussion that Australia needed more "earn while you learn" opportunities for young people and better "harmonisation" between industry, TAFE and universities.
TAFE NSW education and skills executive director Jason Darney, a member of the University of Newcastle Council, said schools could help speed up the output of qualified tradespeople.
"When we talk about electricians and plumbers, you're talking about three, four, five years.
"Where can we do that in schools?
"What can we do within the school sector to quicken that output so the industry can have suitably trained people that are actually in that space working to meet those needs, whether that's school-based apprenticeships or traineeships."
He said parents and schools also had a role to play in guiding young people into the right jobs.
"Too often we've seen people, particularly in schools and parents, say if you're not really good at school, go that way, but if you're good at school, go this way," he said.
"I actually want to challenge that."