The Hunter's peak business group hopes the region's worker shortage starts to ease early next year as new figures show online job advertisements at a record high.
The National Skills Commission's Internet Vacancy Index puts the three-month moving average of Hunter jobs advertised online at a record 6898 in August.
Hunter job ads were up 267 on July and almost double pre-COVID levels.
Business Hunter chief executive Bob Hawes said anecdotal evidence suggested the region's business owners were still desperate for staff.
"The number of conversations I'm having with businesses that are looking into getting people from overseas has jumped," he said.
"It's not an easy process. DFAT tells us they're working on it to get the queues down."
Mr Hawes (pictured) said overseas workers were concerned about being stranded in Australia in the event of a lockdown and baulking at steep air fares and high accommodation costs.
"That's causing some hesitancy, apparently."
Across NSW and Australia, online job advertisements dropped 5.9 per cent in September. The National Skills Commission will publish a regional breakdown for September next week.
In the Hunter, job advertisements in August for a host of professions, including automotive and engineering trade workers (461), carers and aides (409), salespeople (587), machinery operators (494), labourers (686) and clerical staff (1032), were at or near record highs.
Advertised vacancies for professionals, including in IT, business, law, engineering and medicine, passed 1500 for the first time in August.
"A lot of businesses are trying to pull out all stops to make sure they get the people they're looking for," Mr Hawes said.
He said the crisis was not likely to end quickly, but he hoped to see improvements in early 2023 as visa processing times fell.
An estimated 500,000 temporary migrants left Australia during the pandemic, many of them skilled workers.
Mr Hawes said worker shortages had led to higher wages and a "choking down" of output across many sectors of the economy.
"It's definitely an employees' market," he said.
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