New job vacancy figures released yesterday show the mining industry was trying to hire a record 6200 workers in May - far more than at any time during the Howard government's mining boom.
The Bureau of Statistics survey was conducted in the third week of May, two weeks after Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan unveiled the resources tax and two weeks after Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said it would kill the industry ''stone dead''.
Between February and May the number of mining jobs on offer jumped almost 20 per cent at a time when total vacancies fell 2.5 per cent.
The total of 6200 vacancies is head and shoulders above anything ever reached during the previous mining boom when vacancies only once topped 5000.
It is also way out of proportion to the size of mining as an employer.
Mining employs fewer than 200,000 Australians yet had 6200 jobs vacant. Manufacturing, which employs almost one million Australians, had 11,200 job vacancies.
''The mining skill shortage never went away,'' said David Edwards, strategic manager of labour hire firm Drake Australia.
''Mining workers are very hard to find. You need critical skills - more than in other industries - and you often need them in remote locations.''
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