EMPLOYERS in Sydney can't fill 74,000 jobs, even though 265,000 Sydneysiders are living off welfare.
And areas that have the highest number of people on welfare, such as Sydney's outer west, also have among the highest numbers of unfilled job vacancies.
The Government's controversial welfare-to-work changes, which come into force in a fortnight, will force single mothers with school-age children and the disabled who apply for welfare to work at least 15 hours a week.
Employment Participation Minister Sharman Stone said jobs were there for the taking.
With unemployment below 5 per cent and a minerals boom under way, the employment market in Australia was "a bit like the gold rush of the 1890s", Ms Stone said yesterday.
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"If you have the energy to go west, young man, you literally have the world as your oyster.
"Never has there been a time like now to help shift the 2.5 million people of working age on welfare into the workforce."
Official figures from the Government's Job Network and job-placement agencies show that in the March quarter, there were 74,000 jobs available in Sydney that could not be filled.
Job agencies charged with getting the unemployed into work can fill only half the jobs on their books in Sydney.
In outer western Sydney, there are 13,653 jobs available and 41,568 people of working age on welfare.
Placement agencies in the outer west have been able to fill only 39 per cent of jobs. In Sydney's central west, job agencies can only fill 45 per cent.
Ms Stone said this was only part of the picture, as 70 per cent of jobs were never advertised and were filled through recommendations of friends, relatives, sports clubs and other contacts.
"We have to change the culture of how employers advertise work and break the stereotypes of who they think it appropriate to employ."
Employers needed to consider taking on the unemployed or single mothers and the disabled, Ms Stone said.
Welfare groups support the push to get people back to work, but claim the reason many vacancies cannot be filled is that 60 per cent of single mothers finished school at Year 10 and do not have the skills employers need.
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