With the unemployment rate falling, businesses are struggling to find workers to fill the staff shortage in the wake of the Omicron wave of the pandemic.
Carlos Ramirez, owner of Fyshwick restaurant Mr Papa, has been short staffed since December and struggled to find new staff for full, part-time and casual positions.
"There is no staff available."
"[I have had to] just call friends and ask favors to come and work and help us."
The shortage, largely due to a lack of international visitors and students, has also caused him to shorten his restaurant's opening hours to only serve lunch.
While international borders have opened, the rate of international students arriving is expected to remain low.
"Even if restrictions are being lifted, we can't see the results yet because they are maybe coming but for the last two years we have had none," Ramirez said.
The national unemployment rate currently sits at 4.2 per cent, the lowest since 2008, and Prime Minister Scott Morrison thinks it could drop to less than 4 per cent.
"I believe we can now achieve an unemployment rate with a 3 in front of it this year. Our goal is to achieve this in the second half of 2022," he said at the National Press Club at the start of February.
In the ACT the unemployment rate increased by 0.7 percentage points to 4.5 per cent in December 2021.
However, lower unemployment rates will make it even harder to find staff.
Willy Mitchell, founder and director of labor hire company Work For Us, said that Canberra businesses have been struggling to find unskilled labor.
"There is a massive shortage. We could take on double the work we do but we can't find good, reliable staff," he said.
He believes that the lack of staff will lead to businesses being forced to pay more for the staff they can find.
"We've got to pay our staff more [so] the cost of business is going up and all that has got to be passed on so you can actually have a business that is profitable."
He also said that while the rise of interest rates is inevitable, "it's going to be harder to get a loan and so people who don't have money who are starting out have got to save even more and it's harder to borrow."
The increased competitiveness for workers, particularly in areas like hospitality is expected to increase as unemployment falls.
"If unemployment falls, it shifts the bargaining power from employers to employees or potential employees, which makes it more difficult for employers to find employees and easier for employees to find jobs," said ANU School of Economics senior lecturer Timo Henckel.
However, he says it might not lead to increased wages as hoped as "it's not clear just how much low unemployment rates is actually going to feed through to higher wage growth."
