Australia: A Small Business Country

I have been in Australia for more than a year now. Adelaide in that sense is more of a small country town than a big city. It is a problem to find a job here while studying for most of the MBA students.

Some of the students have graduated a couple of months back. It remains to be seen what and when they get a job.

One problem seems to be the fact that Australia is a small business country.

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At June 2004 the number of active businesses on the Australian Bureau
of Statistics Business Register (ABSBR) was 3,015,318. Of the total
number of businesses, 837,078 (28%) were employing, with 2,178,240
(72%) non-employing.

The majority of employing businesses, 754,504 (90%) had between 0 and
19 employees. There were 77,656 (9%) businesses with 20 to 199
employees and 4,918 (1%) businesses with 200+ employees.
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This is from the ABS through Google Answers.

A large number of businesses were small business who did not provide employment, next lot were small businesses which provided employment and the next lot just about 5,000 companies had employees more than 200.

This seems to be the critical problem for employment for MBAs in the country. Generally, MBAs are sought by large companies as they can afford them. A small business cannot afford to have an MBA and even if it does the expectations are way higher than a large business.

This can help in understanding why it may be tough to get a job after the MBA.

This is just one aspect of the situation. As a recently elected student representative to the Board of IGSB, I have decided to take up the issue of career services to the MBA students as my priority. This school lacks the basic of services and they have slowly come to grips with it as more and more international students are joining the school and demanding it.

However, I have not yet seen any great strategy to solve this issue.