Australia\u2019s private employment services are failing to get jobseekers into long-term work, despite costing taxpayers millions of dollars each year, department documents show.<\/p>\n
Just 11.7% of jobseekers in Australia found long-term employment through a job provider in the latest financial year, according to the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations\u2019 annual report.<\/p>\n
Service providers are allowed to claim publicly funded outcome payments when clients have completed four, 12 and 26 weeks in employment \u2013 regardless of whether the client or provider found the job.<\/p>\n
Guardian Australia has previously revealed many jobseekers who find their own employment were bullied into handing over payslips so providers can claim<\/a> the public money.<\/p>\n Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n The government sets a target for providers to have 15% of the cohort hit the 26-week employment mark, but the report shows this has not been met since Workforce Australia started in 2022. The target is based on historic outcome rates across previous programs, the department said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis measure has not been achieved since it was first reported,\u201d the report said. \u201cThe result for the 12-month period to 30 June 2024 was 13.2%.<\/p>\n \u201cFurther, results over 2 years show a declining trend in the outcome rate.\u201d<\/p>\n The report shows that despite the number of jobseekers who are finding work falling, public funding has increased, with the \u201cinvestment per employment outcome\u201d hitting $3,575.<\/p>\n The department said the result was based on a caseload of 590,965 people in the reporting period.<\/p>\n In October 2024, the department launched a complaints line for employment services which has received 8,320 complaints across the year. The majority resolved at first contact.<\/p>\n Jeremy Poxon, a welfare advocate at the Antipoverty Centre, said the system was failing \u201cen mass\u201d to help get people into meaningful work.<\/p>\n \u201cThe government knows full well that this system is failing on this basic metric to help people into work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n It came as Guardian Australia revealed Centrelink<\/a> has threatened payment suspensions to jobseekers at a rate of five a minute, despite serious concerns from social security experts that they are illegal.<\/p>\n Poxon said the data showed the system was better at punishing people than helping them into employment.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cAnd still the government is content with funnelling billions of dollars into an employment system that isn\u2019t helping people into employment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In the annual report, the government said the low number of jobseekers finding work was influenced by the labour market, with a \u201cgrowing skills mismatch\u201d between the jobs on offer and the level of training and education people have been able to undertake.<\/p>\n \u201cThroughout the reporting period, the labour market reflected demand for higher-skilled jobs, rather than low-skilled jobs that are most accessible to participants in Workforce Australia Services,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n Poxon said this was the \u201cgreat elephant in the room\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re dealing with a population who are essentially competing for jobs that don\u2019t exist, but are also further structurally disadvantaged by being homeless or culturally and linguistically diverse,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Poxon called for the whole employment services system to be overhauled, with mutual obligation abolished, payment suspensions stopped and investment in voluntary programs that actually help people find work.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re in this absurd position where the government is spending even more money for even worse outcomes, year on year on year,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard to think of another government-funded industry allowed to operate in this way \u2026 to continue soaking up so much public money and to spit out so few results.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s private employment services are failing to get jobseekers into long-term work, despite costing taxpayers millions of dollars…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-242109","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}