Demand for air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics is booming yet the number of people completing trades in these areas each year is falling.
Employment firm Seek said job ads for air conditioning and refrigerator mechanics in July were one of the fastest moving, up a whopping 31 per cent.
Overall job ads were up 54 per cent.
The research comes as official figures show Australia's unemployment fell to 5.2 per cent in July.
Total employment rose 14,000 to 11.513 million, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Seek trade marketing manager Peter Osborne attributed the rise to the start of the financial year.
He said July is when businesses allocate new budgets.
HVAC&R trades saw huge rises in every state across Australia especially Victoria and South Australia.
Seek tracks job growth across 28 industries covering around 400 different job types.
Despite the rising demand for air conditioning and refrigerator mechanics, the Australian Institute of Refrigeration, Air Conditioning and Heating (AIRAH) is warning of a serious skills gap.
AIRAH CEO, Phil Wilkinson, said more needs to be done to make the industry more attractive to young people.
To prevent the skills gap from widening further, Airah is looking at strategies to make the HVAC&R industry more sexy.
“ Skills gaps in the industry, OH&S, and licensing issues - especially around natural refrigerants - are some of the challenges we face that can only be dealt with by increased training opportunities,” he said.
Summit Matsu Chillers, sales director, Daniel Rollston, is currently hiring and agrees there is definitely a skills gap.
“There seems to be a skills shortage for young people who want a future in refrigeration manufacturing as the school system doesn’t seem to encourage this path enough,” he said.
Job data for the HVAC&R industry will be published in the October edition of Climate Control News (CCN) magazine.
The special report examines strategies to overcome the skills gap and includes a full breakdown of trade data from the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations covering the last three years.
Mechanics training at Western Sydney TAFE
