Sky-high airfares hit Australia’s labor recovery, minister says

The high cost of global travel right now is fueling Australia’s worker shortage, the country’s trade minister said, with the jobs market the tightest it’s been in almost 50 years as the Covid crisis eases. Pre-pandemic, foreign students and young travelers filled a key role in the Australian labor force, working in restaurants and other service-sector jobs, Trade and Tourism Minister Don Farrell said in an interview with Bloomberg News in Los Angeles, on the sidelines of a meeting of Indo-Pacific trade ministers on Friday. Since the country dismantled its strict pandemic border regime earlier this year, demand for these sorts of visas has been high, but would-be workers are being deterred by “capacity and cost,” he said. Expensive airfares are “an impediment to getting things back to normal in terms of staffing,” said Farrell. A lack of flights, with airline capacity not yet back to pre-pandemic levels, is also deterring workers, he said. “We’ve got to somehow address that.” The minister ruled out the government subsidizing workers’ airfares, saying companies that relied on these sorts of employees had received financial support during the pandemic to stay in business and retain staff. Many of the working travelers -- known as “backpackers” -- who filled labor gaps before Covid came from the US and Europe, Farrell said, adding that the cost of airfare from the US to Australia had roughly tripled from pre-pandemic times. <br/>