Australia’s private employment services are failing to get jobseekers into long-term work, despite costing taxpayers millions of dollars each year, department documents show.
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’ annual report.
Service providers are allowed to claim publicly funded outcome payments when clients have completed four, 12 and 26 weeks in employment – regardless of whether the client or provider found the job.
Guardian Australia has previously revealed many jobseekers who find their own employment were bullied into handing over payslips so providers can claim the public money.
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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.
“This measure has not been achieved since it was first reported,” the report said. “The result for the 12-month period to 30 June 2024 was 13.2%.
“Further, results over 2 years show a declining trend in the outcome rate.”
The report shows that despite the number of jobseekers who are finding work falling, public funding has increased, with the “investment per employment outcome” hitting $3,575.
The department said the result was based on a caseload of 590,965 people in the reporting period.
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.
Jeremy Poxon, a welfare advocate at the Antipoverty Centre, said the system was failing “en mass” to help get people into meaningful work.
“The government knows full well that this system is failing on this basic metric to help people into work,” he said.
It came as Guardian Australia revealed Centrelink has threatened payment suspensions to jobseekers at a rate of five a minute, despite serious concerns from social security experts that they are illegal.
Poxon said the data showed the system was better at punishing people than helping them into employment.
“And still the government is content with funnelling billions of dollars into an employment system that isn’t helping people into employment,” he said.
In the annual report, the government said the low number of jobseekers finding work was influenced by the labour market, with a “growing skills mismatch” between the jobs on offer and the level of training and education people have been able to undertake.
“Throughout 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,” the report said.
Poxon said this was the “great elephant in the room”.
“We’re dealing with a population who are essentially competing for jobs that don’t exist, but are also further structurally disadvantaged by being homeless or culturally and linguistically diverse,” he said.
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.
“We’re in this absurd position where the government is spending even more money for even worse outcomes, year on year on year,’ he said.
“It’s hard to think of another government-funded industry allowed to operate in this way … to continue soaking up so much public money and to spit out so few results.”
