WDEA Works sees 'influx' of job seekers as the pandemic forces unemployment up

A 50 per cent increase in people seeking work since the coroanvirus pandemic has led Warrnambool-based agency, WDEA Works, to put on 10 new south-west staff to help find people jobs.

WDEA Works chief executive officer Tom Scarborough said if JobKeeper ceased then he expected that workload would be even greater.

"The influx of clients does put pressure on service models that are meant to service five or six per cent unemployment," Mr Scarborough said.

"We take everybody as an individual, we assess their needs and experiences and sometimes will search to create a job that might not exist."

The provider's employment director Brett Orr said despite unemployment nationally reaching at least 7.5 per cent in August, the agency was finding people jobs.

He said some of the positions had obvious links to the pandemic, with cleaners, delivery drivers, some sale assistants and even sewing machinists making masks, in demand.

But Mr Orr says other jobs are more surprising, such as employers seeking workers in hospitality and construction, and food producers needing people for egg farming and to manufacture ready-made meals.

"There is absolutely jobs out there, it comes down to how you engage with an employer," he said.

"Employers know if the community is not strong around them, everyone suffers."

The organisation has placed more than 40 people in work in the past four weeks.

But it is also preparing if JobKeeper ends for unemployment to reach as high as 13 per cent nationally.

Mr Orr said that meant the provider was being more innovative about how to find and even create positions in a tough jobs market.

"We have been able to create niche positions for people (and) employers by identifying transferable skills that relate to the current situation and then guiding those people to opportunities in new and emerging jobs," Mr Orr said.

He said the employment provider was increasingly working with people who had never been unemployed or received government benefits in their lives.

"Our job seekers are a mix of people who were already on our books looking for work, people of all abilities, and now more recently unemployed people with good skills and a solid work history that has been interrupted by COVID-19," Mr Orr said.

"Someone becoming long-term unemployed is what we want to avoid."

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