A Department of Treasury study found that mining companies continue their aggressive recruitment to meet labour shortages suffered by the sector. Among their measures are the downgrade of selection criteria and allocation of a large amount of money to train new recruits.

"An excess of demand for skilled employees has also seen firms in the mining and related construction sectors becoming less selective in recruitment but spending more on training," The Northwest.com.au quoted the report.

The basis of the quarterly report released on Tuesday is the interview by the Treasury of companies and organizations under the agency's business liaison programme to get a better reading of Australia's economic pulse.

While there was a slowdown of recruitment in non-mining sectors in the last six months of 2011, there was strong wage growth especially among professionals where the skill shortage was felt. In the case of the mining sector, it continued to fly-in and fly-out workers, particularly from the eastern seaboard states.

The same report noted that the resources sector continued to enjoy strong demand from the emerging Asian economies, coal production companies on the east coast have yet to recover from the adverse weather problems in early 2011.

To address the labour shortage in the mining sector, Treasurer Wayne Swan is reportedly in favour of hiking the number of skilled migrant visas or 457 visas by at least 5,000 in May in the federal budget.

The Construction, Foresty, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) ought improved market testing to ensure that Australian mining firms would hire local workers first before increasing the quote for overseas workers which the union said would not solve the country's skill shortage problem.

"We have actually got serious job losses happening at the moment. We'd be concerned about more skilled migrants coming in while Australians are going on the dole.... We need to be careful the skilled migration scheme is not a scheme that can be abused by unscrupulous employers, who bring people in rather than give jobs to unemployed Australians," CFMEU Construction National Secretary David Noonan told The Australian Online.

Coalition Immigration spokesman Scott Morrison pointed out that half of skilled migrants actually end up not n Western Australia and Queensland, but it Melbourne or Sydney.

The Minerals Council of Australia pushed for an increase in permanent migration to help address the labour shortage and rely less on the use of temporary skilled migrants.

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