Amazulu

Enjoy the rate race in Sydney.

Amazulu

Sure not everyone is earning $100k+ but a shit load are. You raise a fair point about the 'buzz factor'. I look at it this way:
Sydney is a great place to visit but not to live,
Perth is a great place to live but not to visit.

Enjoy the east coast.

northernbird

As wife of a former CAD operator you can be assured that in the oil and gas industry it is a highly skilled job. One wrong click of the mouse and you have a 3 foot steel pipe clashing with another 3ft steel pipe which could prove extremely costly for the engineering companies. To come here for Woodside on a 4 year 457 visa they wanted minimum of HNC in engineering. You are right about the money though, friends of ours have just come out here for 4 years and he is earning $88 per hour.

Amazulu

Sorry if I offended you. When I say CAD operator I mead someone who has no technical input into the design & just draws what they are told, this does not require great skill & is pretty boring. I suspect that your friend (& your husband) is a CAD designer who does have a design input & uses CAD as a tool to achieve that design. This requires a lot of skill & technical knowledge. There is a big difference.

renth

Not really Larissa, my skills are IT, my pal, who is a nurse is currently getting trained up in Newman on the trucks. Also the son of a mate is working as a cleaner on a Pilbara minesite for $100,000 a year.

There isn't a great deal of competition for theses jobs, there are just too many jobs and too few people wanting to do them. How else can they be paying this money for low skilled work?

Larissa

Go for it then! What I really wanted to get over to the new migrants is that you can't necessarily walk into that kind of work - you need to know the right people - I bet it took a while for the offer to come your way.

Hubby was job seeking for 9 months or so, got a small contract in the meantime to keep us going, had to do night work for an agency and then the decent job came along. (3 months looking - btw he's fussy, 3 months on contract, 3 months doing nights). I don't want to give new migrants the impression that you can just walk into a job, that wouldn't be fair. Some jobs are pretty field specific.

But I can definately say that Engineers qualified at tertiary level are in great demand, plus it's harder to move the skills base to another state capital (as would be possible in IT) so work is more certain. However there's a lot of discussion that the resources sector could dry up in a few years Hence many people are grabbing the big salaries to pay off the mortgages while they can.

northernbird

just re-read my post, sorry I really jumped on you didn't I. Didn't mean to, us WA folk should stick together!!! I have spent so many years defending what he does I just engaged keyboard before brain.

renth

Correct, it's funny, for an industry crying out for people it still relies on "who you know" to get in.

bal56

I can echo a fair bit of stuff on here. As a dad of a large family, there's more family orientated outdoor stuff here than we can fit in. The economy is booming more than anywhere else in Oz, although probably starting from a lower base. As has already been said, however, you can't always walk into a job, as recruitment agents are relatively unsophisticated in how they judge your skills. If you can't instantly be classified as say a Project Manager or Business Analyst, and have no local experience, they lose interest and move on to the other 'low hanging fruit' instead. Once I ignored them and did my own research (trade associations etc.) I was fine. I'm also experiencing some of the same as Worzel - a guy's just been brought in from Sydney to help me out, and he's earning 40% more than me!
Having said all this, to emphasise that one person's opportunities are not necessarily another's, our mates from over the road in the UK went back for good a couple of weeks ago (after 9 months), disenchanted with education, (working in) the health service, the lack of UK-style country pubs and cheap overseas holiday destinations.

Simone

Interesting bit from Noel Whittakers newsletter I got in my email today:

INTEREST RATES

The Reserve Bank did not raise interest rates at its meeting last Tuesday and
the following press release from Challenger Economist Dr Ron Woods gives hope
that rates may be on the way down and not on the way up.
“The weaker jobs market is apparent all over the country even in the last boom-time state, Western Australia. There in the last month male trend growth was negative although locally they say it’s because there are not enough workers to hire. If so perhaps they should charter a few planes to fly-in some of the growing ranks of the unemployed from the rest of the country, if they will have them. This week the RBA again decided not to change official interest rates. With the free-market determined 3-year bond yields now around 0.30% or 30 basis points below the regulated cash rate (set by the monopoly supplier of cash in the country, the RBA) the RBA will have a harder time keeping their rate too far above the free-market rate. I think the pressure on the RBA to match that rate and cut theirs will build.”




And I thought I saw on the news yesterday that job ads were 5 or 10% up this month? (can't rememeber if that was national or state. Can't remember much of it at all really )

Anyway, Perth has given us plenty of oppertunities. Not earning bucket loads (yet) but definetly happy with our current situation, and certainly if it keeps improving like it has been doing, we'll be just fine.
Also have enough to do (as DINKS ), don't hardly have time to do 'stuff' in between all the normal stuff (working, shopping, sleeping, cooking, cleaning, watching tv, internet, hanging in the pool, gardening) and socialising with friends and family(parents 200km's away, brother 20mins away), dinners, nights out, parties.(don't go out with the two of us at all, only if we're with friends. Except maybe to the cinema every so often, or dinner occasionally).

Devlin

One thing to remember is that if you are relying on cheap flights to get away from Perth every now and again then this may not be an option in the future. I firmly believe that with the inevitable rise in oil prices, cheap flights eventually just will not exist.

Amazulu

I don't think that it is inevitable that oil prices will keep rising. Short term maybe due to political reasons, Iran for instance. For every economist/expert saying that oil will go to $150/barrel, there is another saying it will go to $40/barrel. Only the bad scenarios seem to make the headlines.

Brisben

I disagree, oil is not a source that will be available forever, therefore inevitable prices will and can only rise. Agree at the moment and for sometime there has been political tensions becasue of it but demand outstrips supply and in these instances prices rise....Economics mate.

renth

Amazulu, two words for you: "Peak Oil"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

BadgeIsBack

Not all minework involves 'going down a hole'. I would love to be an engineer or a geo and do tips to WA. Chief and I plan to go outback for a years before the kids start primary.

I think this WA won't last, or not at current levels.