Everyone on the Sunshine Coast says they can't find staff. The narrative has hardened into something everyone repeats. "There's a talent shortage." "Nobody wants to work." "It's impossible to hire here."

The Queensland Government Statistician's data tells a different story. The Coast doesn't have a talent shortage. It has a visibility problem.

Let me show you the numbers.

What the data actually says

As of the most recent labour force data for the Sunshine Coast region, there are 225,100 people employed locally. That's up by nearly 5,000 in the past year. Employment growth here is running at 2.1%, outpacing the Queensland state average of 1.7%.

Unemployment sits at 3.2%. That's the third lowest of all 19 SA4 statistical regions in Queensland. The Coast is one of the most-employed regions in the state.

More people working here than ever before. Faster growth than the state average. Lower unemployment than almost anywhere else.

So if there are more people working than ever, why can't you find anyone?

The contradiction

Here's the maths that explains the contradiction.

3.2% unemployment means almost everyone who wants a job already has one. The pool of active job seekers, people who are unemployed and looking, is genuinely tiny on the Coast. By the numbers, only about 7,500 people locally are unemployed and looking. Spread that across every industry, every role type, every skill level, every part of the region, and you can see why a single workshop trying to hire one mechanic might find no one.

Meanwhile, you've got nearly 40,000 local businesses also trying to hire. Every single one fishing in that same shrinking pond.

It's not that the talent isn't out there. It's that the talent isn't the unemployed people. The talent is the 225,100 people who are currently employed.

Why this reframe matters

If you tell yourself the Coast has a talent shortage, your strategy becomes "wait it out" or "pay recruiters more." Both of those are losing strategies, because the situation isn't going to change. The Coast's population keeps growing. Employment growth keeps outpacing the state. Unemployment will stay low.

The pond of active job seekers won't refill any time soon. So if your hiring relies on dipping a net into that pond, you're stuck.

If instead you reframe it as a visibility problem, your strategy completely changes. The question stops being "how do I attract the unemployed people" and starts being "how do I reach the employed people."

That's a much bigger pool. And it's not actually that hard to access, if you know how.

Where the employed people are

Employed people aren't browsing SEEK on a Tuesday afternoon. They're at work.

Where are they when they're not at work? The same place as everyone else. On their phones. Scrolling Facebook and Instagram between tasks. Watching Reels at lunch. Catching up on group chats while waiting for the kettle to boil.

This is critical. Almost every potential candidate on the Coast is reachable. Just not through job boards.

You need to be visible where their attention already is. Not where it isn't.

What "visibility" actually means

For a Coast business hiring in this environment, visibility means a few specific things.

It means having ad creative that interrupts the scroll. Real video footage of your workplace, not a stock-photo job ad. Something that makes a passive viewer pause, watch, and think "that looks like a good shop."

It means targeted distribution. Facebook and Instagram let you put your content in front of qualified locals within 25 kilometres of your business. You can narrow by industry, by interests, by demographics. You're not casting a wide net hoping someone bites. You're putting yourself directly in front of the right people.

It means consistency. Industry research shows it takes seven to twelve impressions before someone takes action on something they've seen advertised. A single boost on a single post doesn't move the needle. A sustained, targeted campaign does.

And it means giving them a real reason to consider you. Not vague claims about culture. Specific, honest content about what your workplace is actually like and what success looks like for someone in the role.

This is what "recruitment marketing" actually is. Not a buzzword. A specific approach designed to reach the 225,100 employed people, not just the 7,500 unemployed ones.

The businesses already winning at this

A few Coast businesses are quietly figuring this out. They're running paid social campaigns with real workplace video. They're getting applications from people who weren't actively looking. They're filling roles in weeks instead of months. They're paying $390 per hire instead of $13,500 to a recruiter.

Most of these businesses look like their competitors from the outside. Same industry, same kind of work, same skill requirements. The difference is in the marketing system, not the underlying business.

This is why the talent shortage narrative is so dangerous. It lets the businesses NOT figuring this out blame the market, instead of looking at what they could change.

What this means if you're hiring now

If you've got a role open and you're frustrated with SEEK and Indeed, the numbers are clear. The active job seeker pool is tiny. You can keep fishing in it and keep struggling, or you can change ponds.

The employed people who'd move for the right opportunity are out there. There are roughly 30 times more of them than there are active job seekers. They just need a reason to consider you, presented in the place they're already paying attention.

That's not a talent shortage. That's a marketing challenge. And marketing challenges have solutions.

Why this matters for the next five years

The Coast's labour market is going to stay tight. Population growth, business growth, employment growth are all running ahead of the state average. Unemployment is unlikely to climb back to a level where SEEK works the way it did a decade ago.

The businesses that adapt to this reality early are going to dominate. The ones that keep blaming "the talent shortage" are going to keep losing skilled people to competitors who figured out how to reach them.

This is one of those moments where the businesses that move first compound their advantage. The longer you wait, the harder it is to catch up to the ones already running proper hiring systems.

The takeaway

The Sunshine Coast doesn't have a talent shortage. It has 225,100 employed people, near-record employment growth, and the third-lowest unemployment rate in Queensland.

What the Coast has is a visibility problem. Nearly 40,000 businesses fishing in a pond of 7,500 active job seekers. The maths is brutal if that's your only channel.

The fix is to stop fishing in the small pond and start being visible in the much larger one. The one with all the employed people whose attention is on their phones, not on SEEK.

When you stop blaming the market and start fixing the marketing, hiring stops feeling impossible.

Want help building a hiring campaign that reaches the right Coast locals? Book a 15-minute call and we'll map it out.