Shayne Murray has spent $30,000 in the past year trying to attract 12 staff for his taxi company in Broome.
So far, he has managed to fill just one vacancy.
Mr Murray is just one of the many local businesses scrambling to find workers ahead of the busy dry season months — a peak time for operators in WA's Kimberley region.
As the humidity eases and conditions cool, Mr Murray fears he would not be able to capitalise on the inevitable spike in demand without extra hands on the wheel.
"If we get one or two [applications] we're lucky," he said.
"For our industry, it is a very basic skill set that is required to do what we need to do, and to even find that capacity of person is very difficult."
Mr Murray has pursued multiple avenues to try and attract staff to drive his taxis, including digital marketing on social media and job websites, but has received only a handful of serious applications.
He has also travelled to Perth on several occasions to meet with former staff in a bid to try and recruit them back to help for the next six months, without success.
Mr Murray said local businesses had been hopeful that when the WA's hard border fell earlier this month that the pool of prospective applicants would increase. It is a hope that has since faded.
"The east coast is already ahead of the game from us here, we're on the back foot," he said.
"A lot of the backpackers have already got employment on the east coast, and they're probably a couple of months ahead of us."
2022 staff woes 'even worse'
Besky Fernandez is the executive operations manager with Broome Time Resort, a local accommodation offering which relies heavily on dry season tourist traffic.
Mr Fernandez has also advertised a range of positions, but he too has received only a small number of applications.
Finding affordable short-term accommodation has proven a significant challenge for many businesses trying to attract workers to the region.
Mr Fernandez said Broome Time Resort had made the tough decision to segregate out an entire block of accommodation to house prospective workers.
"A couple of current staff, when they wanted to continue working with us, we saw they couldn't get any accommodation," he said.
"When we saw the scenario with the housing, we thought 'okay, we need to sacrifice one block for our staff'."
Despite the offer of accommodation as an additional sweetener in an increasingly tight rental market, he said application rates remained low.
Kimberley Regional Group of Councils chairman David Menzel said the lack of applications was likely due to low confidence among prospective working holiday makers.
"I guess over the last few years WA has been a very difficult spot to get into," he said.
"We've lost the connections with quite a few of those workers who would've made the trip from the east or the south for the dry season.
An employee's market
Mr Menzel said the current low national unemployment rate indicated that tight worker availability would continue for the foreseeable future.
He also urged workers considering a sea change to take advantage of the current market.
"There's some pretty significant salary offers out there," he said.
"Get here and enjoy the weather conditions. There's lots of jobs, and I think you'll find it's an employee's market.
"Conditions will be pretty favourable for employees coming here to work through the dry season."
Regional Chambers of Commerce of WA CEO Kitty Prodonovich said the tight supply of workers was an ongoing issue right across regional Western Australia.
"We really want to try and encourage more people to move to regional WA, there are so many opportunities for work in every type of work.
"We've got to look at how we get people in here quickly … travellers and workers from overseas, how we look at visa requirements.
"We also need all three tiers of government looking locally at what's going to happen with accommodation. How we can ramp up the housing and maybe looking at further incentives."
